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Your favourite Hunslet players


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Muscroft was a great player for us on the wing , but still think Ronnie Sulipa who played on the wing was the ultimate , a player who had speed size, and was totally evil. remember him picking up  Des Drummond in a tackle early on in a game against Leigh and just dropping him on his head. And remember Des was the hard man of rugby league at that time. The  rest of game Des Drummond didn't want to know , and  you can't blame him , good job things have changed regarding tackling.

 

Great player though, Ronnie Sulipa, the game against Leeds it was Boxing day and was televised and he got 3 tries at Headingley for us. 

 

So I would say he has been one of our greatest winger's ,  from the 1970s  to the present time to play for us

.

Don't know if Ronnie was an Aboriginie from Australia or he was a Maorie from New Zealand ?

sorry for the wrong spelling , can't be arsed to correct it at this late time.

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Although I greatly admired many of the later generations of players – King, Webb, Graham especially – my favourites were established in my first year at Parkside: the 1961-62 season (when Hunslet finished 25th in the league).  Langton, Shelton, Gabbitas, Hartley et al.

 

Half a century later, in my memoirs of sports spectating, I recalled the powerful impressions that these players had made on a captivated 6 year-old.  For instance:

 

Billy Langton seemed to me, even at that early stage and even if I would not then have described him as such, to be a meticulous professional.  His goal kicking routine was unwavering: the ball pointed upright or forwards towards the posts, depending on the length of the kick, three long strides back, and a smooth action and follow through.  He was also a superb catcher of the rugby ball.  It seemed that, in virtually every match, he would have occasion to retrieve a penalty kick by the opposition by standing next to the touchline, his feet fractionally in the field of play and his body leaning over the line, and catching the ball before it bounced.  When the ball was safely gathered, he would twist and arch himself to remain in play and then, his balance restored, set off on his return run”.

 

However, if pushed to name one particular favourite, I would go for – arguably - Hunslet’s greatest-ever player:

 

Although he had been sought by bigger and wealthier clubs - notably Wigan – Geoff Gunney had stayed loyal to Hunslet.  He would play a significant role in the later events at the club, on and off the pitch, but, at the time of my first visits to Parkside, he stood out as a big powerful man, equally adept at tackling and running, with a sledgehammer hand-off.  When Hunslet were awarded a penalty, and if it was outside Langton’s range to the goalposts, Gunney took the punts into touch: big booming kicks, delivered with a slow run up and a graceful swing of the leg”. 

 

From “An Ordinary Spectator: 50 Years of Watching Sport” by John Rigg (Silverwood Books).  www.anordinaryspectator.com.

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Yes JAR Geoff Gunney was /is the best player ever to put on a shirt in the history of Leeds in any sport , who put his heart and soul in for a club.

He saved Hunslet from extinction , being not only our best ever player to play for our club , but the saviour of the Hunslet club , when we folded while playing at Parkside.

 

The likes of Billy Bremner, John Charles , Geoff Boycott , Lewis Jones , achieved great sucsess in their respective sports in Leeds, but no one did more for a club than Geoff Gunney did for any club in Leeds.

Geoff did everything for the love of a club , the rest did it for the money , and it's disgrace that our stadium is called the the John Charles centre for sport stadium,John was a great player in his time , but still a man who decided to play some of his career in Italy playing for Juventus,it's nothing to do with Hunslet at all in that John Charles name was palmed off on us. It should have been the Gunney stadium for sport not John Charles ( who is   from Wales not even a Yorkshireman ) , Well we might as well call Elland Road Gunney Road instead , it's as daft as that , in that of which dummy thought of that one up, not knocking John Charles a fine player and man , and he should hae been  the statue outside Elland Road , instead Leeds Utd put a little ginger haired crab on a statue outside Elland Road , before the best ever player to play for Leeds Utd in their history.

 

 also Geoff Gunney had a big offer from Wigan to go there, and he turned down a big money offer to play American Football in the 60s to stop with us, because of the love of the club. who else did that in any sport from Leeds then  ???

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