The traditional Easter Sunday Women’s Rugby League Finals Festival at the Millennium Stadium, Post Office Road, Featherstone is always something to look forward to. And that’s particularly the case this year, for me anyway.
I’m anticipating the occasion with extra relish this time around because the first match, at noon (and I’m fervently hoping that work commitments won’t prevent me from getting there in time for the kick-off) involves two of the Women’s Amateur Rugby League Association’s student sides.
Leeds University and Liverpool University will face off in the Plate Final and it will be interesting to see at first hand how the Women’s game at student level is developing (Manchester University, incidentally, are the other team from the arena of further education).
This is a crucial area for Rugby League’s development and not one that the RFL, with its very heavy focus on summer fare for women and girls, can easily accommodate as things stand.
It’s therefore down to WARL chair Steve Manning, secretary Amanda Wigglesworth and their colleagues on a hardworking committee to provide a vehicle through which the lasses of Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester Universities can enjoy their Rugby League, and in my opinion we should all applaud their efforts in the face of many difficulties.
I’m looking forward, too, to hopefully meeting up at Featherstone with Andrew Cudbertson who, back in the late 1960s, with the legendary Cec Thompson, courageously launched the Leeds University men’s team, at a time when such acts could have had serious personal repercussions given the antipathy shown to Rugby League by so many people in the ‘establishment’. Andrew, who has remained close to Leeds University Rugby League ever since, could not possibly have envisaged, back then, that that historic side could, more than half-a-century on, be described as a men’s team. The notion of a women’s side at Leeds University would have been beyond imagining back then, which I think just goes to show how far Rugby League, indeed society, has come.
The Plate Final will be followed, at 2.00pm, by the Challenge Cup Final, in which holders Featherstone Lionesses meet West Leeds. Get to both, if you can, the day is always hugely enjoyable – as is the traditional Oldham ARL’s Standard Cup Final, which is being played at Oldham RUFC on Good Friday lunchtime, this year between Saddleworth Rangers and Waterhead Warriors. Another unmissable occasion!
Many clubs will be spending time right now, I’m sure, looking at any projects for which they could secure funding through the World Cup’s small grants programme.
A total of around £400,000 is, as revealed elsewhere in today’s issue, now available as the pledge to secure the future health of grassroots Rugby League is renewed – and impressively vigorously – by RLWC2021 chief executive Jon Dutton and his colleagues. I hope that, by the time we reach this time next year, all will have been suitably honoured for the tremendous work they have done, and which they are continuing to do.
Our sport as a whole shares the same philosophy, as was illustrated on Saturday when Lock Lane dedicated their National Conference League Premier Division fixture with Rochdale Mayfield to the ‘Give a Duck’ Foundation, a charity that supports children with cancer.
The Foundation works to ensure that children receive their own ‘chemo duck’, to offer comfort and support, and it’s a cause that means a great deal to everyone at Lock Lane as senior player Paul Brown and his partner Jodie lost a little boy to cancer last year.
Head coach Paul Couch said: “The club really pulled together for them and we decided to organise a foundation day around the Mayfield game. The charity will receive £1 from every adult that pays, while the players all bought warm-up t-shirts, and paid to play. And there were raffles after the match.
“I have spoken about us flying high and doing well on the field, but I’m prouder of the boys for how they are supporting this than with anything else, it’s fantastic what they are doing.”
You can only agree, can’t you?
Meanwhile, I understand that Charlie Mills, who suffered the most bizarre of injuries when scoring a try for Saddleworth Rangers at Ince Rose Bridge last week, is back home. Charlie somehow got a corner flag stuck in his leg and, not surprisingly, the incident, which I reported in last week’s issue, has attracted plenty of attention. He and his family are lying a bit low right now, which is understandable, as he recovers. I’m sure everyone in Rugby League will wish him well.
Not lying low, and rightly so, is Rebecca Knight, who is such a driving force at Underbank. Rangers withdrew from the National Conference League late last year, despite having reached the Premier Division play-offs, and are now rebuilding in the Yorkshire Men’s Fourth Division. Rebecca is, she believes, making history by being the first woman to coach a men’s team on match-days, and she may well be correct. I recall Jackie Sheldon, who was such a powerhouse as Women’s Rugby League’s Development Officer, coaching a men’s team a couple of decades ago, but I’m not sure whether she actually oversaw a game. And, at another level, Miss Adele Collinson made national news when she looked after the team at my primary school, Hunslet Carr, back in the 1960s.
Rebecca and her players got off to a grand start, beating Kippax & Swillington convincingly. One to watch, I suspect.
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