RUGBY LEAGUE WORLD has finally reached its 500th issue, a little more than 48 years after the first issue of Open Rugby (as it then was) was launched in May 1976.
An awful lot of water has flown under the bridge since then and rugby league has changed dramatically in that time.
Let’s just remind ourselves of what the game was like in May 1976.
In the Challenge Cup final, St Helens fielded a team that was unkindly dubbed ‘Dad’s Army’, because of their having a front row of John Mantle, Tony Karalius and Kel Coslett, which had a combined age of more than 100, to defeat Widnes 20–5 at Wembley on the 8th May in front of a crowd of 89,982, a figure that the RFL couldn’t dream of today.
The winner of the Lance Todd Trophy was St Helens fullback Geoff Pimblett, who was a St Helens icon of his day. The following season he would become the first player in the history of the game to win both the Lance Todd Trophy and the Harry Sunderland Trophy, when Saints defeated Warrington 32-20 in the Premiership Final at Station Road, Swinton.
I’ve already mentioned that rugby league has changed dramatically in the years since Open Rugby first appeared. And some of those changes can hardly be described as changes for the better.
Mentioning Swinton’s Station Road brings back particular memories for me because I was there in 1967 when Wakefield defeated St Helens 21-9 to become the champions for the first time by winning the replay after the two teams had drawn at Headingley.
I had bunked off school for the afternoon to head to Station Road with my father and uncle and I was one of 33,537 who gathered for an early evening kick-off, which was necessary given that the stadium lacked floodlights.
The following day I discovered that someone had spotted me heading out of the school grounds at lunchtime and I was summoned by the headmaster to receive six of the best (the instrument of corporal punishment was the strap at my school, rather than the cane, which it had been at junior school).
With the adrenaline still flowing through my veins from the previous evening, it’s fair to say I didn’t feel a thing. Indeed, having to pay the price of my support for Wakefield made me feel even more attached to the club.
After administering the punishment the headmaster, who was a Jesuit priest, asked me whether I now regretted my action and I still remember my response and his reply.
“I’m afraid not, father,” I said. “I would do the same thing again.”
I almost expected him to give me six more, but instead he patted me on the shoulder and said, “Good boy” and let me out of his study.
I’ve always wondered what made him say that. Maybe he was a secret Trinity fan himself, despite the school being in Leeds.
Station Road, like many other stadiums from those days, is sadly no more. It was demolished in 1992 after Swinton mortgaged it to the hilt and were unable to pay the interest on the loan. It turned Swinton into a nomadic club and was a terrible blow for rugby league.
Also different in those days was the fact that small clubs could still hope to reach Wembley for the Challenge Cup final.
For example, just before Open Rugby’s first appearance Keighley had played St Helens in the Challenge Cup semi-final at Huddersfield’s Fartown ground (another stadium lost to rugby league) and they had gone down 5-4. It was so near and yet so far. Sadly, Keighley were relegated at the end of that season as they finished 14th in the 16-team first division. Like several others, they were destined to become a yo-yo club, which was an inevitable result of the move to two divisions from the 1973/4 season.
And there are two other things that were so very different in 1976.
First, rugby league on TV was restricted to the BBC and to the commentaries of Eddie Waring. Usually only the second half of matches would be broadcast on Grandstand on Saturday afternoons, as was the semi-final between St Helens and Keighley. But we also had the sight that seems remarkable now of the show’s frontman David Coleman presenting the show live from Fartown.
Waring commentated on the game by himself, without any other pundits, and if you watch coverage from those days it’s quite remarkable to note how eloquent he was, despite his later decline. At that time Sky Sports hadn’t yet figured in Rupert Murdoch’s imagination.
Another difference is the absence of major figures in the game who had been signed from rugby union, particularly from Wales.
In that 1976 cup final, for example, Saints had Roy Mathias, John Mantle, Kel Coslett and Mel James, all of whom enhanced the profile of the game way beyond the north of England.
How we would like to see that now!
So I suppose rugby league has had a mixed report over the last 50 years and I suspect I may not be around for this magazine’s 1,000th issue. But I hope it does arrive one day, in whatever form it may then have.
It’s onwards and upwards.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 500 (September 2024)
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