Rugby League World’s journey around the villages, towns and cities that have rugby league running through their veins heads to one side of the Midlands
Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire
MIDLANDS Hurricanes are heading to Derby for a one-off appearance in July as the ambitious Birmingham club try to spread the rugby league gospel throughout the region from which they take their name.
In going to Haslams Lane, home of Derby Rugby, of the 15-a-side code’s fifth tier (the first below the national leagues), for their League One meeting with Hunslet on Sunday 9, Hurricanes are breaking new ground.
But it won’t be the first time professional rugby league has been played in the county, with memories of a club who lasted for nine campaigns between 1984-85 and 1992-93 being stirred.
For while Mansfield Marksman, who later became Nottingham City, spent the bulk of their existence in Nottinghamshire, they crossed the border into Derbyshire towards the end of a tough second season – and stayed for a further two campaigns, the second of which was the most successful in their short and often-troubled history.
Rugby league first took place in the East Midlands way back in December 1911, when the Australians, touring Great Britain for the second time, were beaten 5-3 by England in front of an estimated 3,000 at Meadow Lane.
The venue remains the home of Notts County, founder members of the Football League in 1888 and freshly promoted back to it after four seasons in the fifth-tier National League, and staged a Mansfield match early in the 1986-87 season.
That was against Fulham (now, of course, London Broncos), with Marksman winning 32-18 in front of 950.
By that time, Nottingham’s other major football stadium, Forest’s City Ground, had staged an exhibition rugby league match, with Hull KR beating Cardiff City in May 1983.
A crowd of 2,000 suggested there was sufficient interest in the area to form a professional club, and Mansfield Marksman were founded, the second part of their title coming from the lager produced by chief sponsors Mansfield Beers.
The new club, based at another football ground, Mansfield Town’s Field Mill, entered the Rugby Football League’s Second Division alongside another brand new side, Sheffield Eagles, for the 1984-85 season, when the two sections comprised 36 teams, the biggest number since 1902-03.
Marksman, wearing light and dark blue shirts, got off to a flying start under player-coach Mick Blacker, winning their first five matches on the spin, and eight of their first nine, with 2,291 turning up for the first home game, a 15-0 victory over Wakefield Trinity.
With a team including former Halifax half Terry Langton, ex-Wigan and Keighley centre or second row Steve Nicholson and versatile back Keith Whiteman, brought in from Bradford Northern, Marksman won 15 of their 28 league games to finish that first season ninth out of 20 clubs (Sheffield were 17th), their average home attendance being 1,020.
However the club lost £90,000, and as the playing budget fell, so did the team.
By the end of 1985-86, Marksman were bottom of the table, having taken only five points from 34 league games, and were onto their third coach (Blacker, Bill Kirkbride and Steve Dennison), having used 57 different players.
Attendances had more than halved, the club were struggling to pay the rent, and with six of 17 home matches remaining, they moved eight miles and into the neighbouring county of Derbyshire to play at the Alfreton Town Sports Stadium (aka North Street), home of the non-league football club of that name and now called the Impact Arena.
It might have been a more modest setting, but Marksman, having changed the club colours to green and yellow, picked up on the pitch, and in 1987-88, their fourth season and with Jim Crellin as coach and Kiwi forward Shane Tupaea influential, finished seventh out of the 20 second-tier members, gaining 15 victories and one draw from their 28 league games.
After averaging attendances of 368 in each of their two full seasons at Alfreton, Marksman were planning a move back to Mansfield, this time to play at the Forest Town Arena, which was being developed on the site of a former cricket ground.
But delays to the project left them making hurried arrangements to use the former Sutton Town Football Club’s Low Moor Road ground in Kirby in Ashfield, five miles South-West of Mansfield, for the 1988-89 campaign, when amid an improved average gate of 560, they finished second-bottom.
Then, following a boardroom split, the club decided to become Nottingham City, playing at the Harvey Haddon Stadium, an athletics arena in the Bilborough suburb to the West of the centre.
The move meant the loss of the brewery sponsorship, and while the first season there (1989-90) yielded an improved average attendance of 577, that was partly down to the Halifax followers who swelled the turn-out for that particular match to 2,545, a Marksman/City record.
Incidentally, Sheffield played three top-flight matches in Derbyshire that season, with their games against Leeds, Bradford and Castleford all hosted by Chesterfield Football Club at their former Saltergate ground.
Meanwhile City’s performances remained poor, and after another second-bottom finish, they were basement dwellers for their final three seasons, when home gates were generally between 250 and 270.
They suffered a 100-6 Yorkshire Cup preliminary-round defeat by Hull KR in 1990-91 (that game had to be switched to Doncaster’s Tattersfield due to work being carried out at the Harvey Haddon) and in 1991-92, lost every game (26 in the freshly-created Third Division plus three in cup competitions).
Alongside Chorley Borough and Blackpool Gladiators, City were culled on the RFL’s reversion to two divisions at the end of the 1992-93 season, becoming members of the National Conference League but surviving only two campaigns before folding.
They had suffered a 138-0 loss at Barrow in the first round of the Regal Trophy in 1994-95.
Three East Midlands sides currently play in the Yorkshire Men’s League – Nottingham Outlaws, Derby Elks, who are based at Ilkeston, and Sherwood Wolf Hunt, from Mansfield.
Picture: Alfreton Town Sports Stadium
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 486 (July 2023)
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