Hull KR have set the pace in Super League this season, but our time machine takes a trip back to the 1960s when Colin Hutton’s Robins were setting similar standards.
HULL KR made a flying start to this campaign, recording an impressive tally of league points from the beginning of the season.
In winning 48-0 at Castleford on 19th June, Willie Peters’ team equalled Colin Hutton’s of 1966-67 by chalking up a 14th victory from the first 15 games.
And while the Robins of almost 60 years ago lost 22-14 at Wakefield in match number 16, the current side were 34-10 home winners over Trinity to make it a new mark, their second setback not coming until round 17, when Leeds ended up 14-8 on top at Sewell Group Craven Park.
In overall games from the start of the campaign, there were 18 wins in 19 in 1966-67, taking in a Yorkshire Cup final triumph over Featherstone at Headingley, while this year, there were 20 in 21, including June’s Wembley Challenge Cup Final glory against Warrington.
Rolling back the years, the one defeat in 15 for Hutton’s side was a 15-5 loss at Workington – in the days before a motorway network of any scale or significance, a time-consuming journey from Hull – in the second outing (both league).
For Peters’ men, it was 28-12 at home to Wigan in the seventh in Super League and 10th if Challenge Cup ties are included.
Today’s fans thrill to the skills of Mikey Lewis, Jez Litten and Elliot Minchella, but who were the stars of 1966-67, and how did Rovers fare that season?
While Australian Peters is now in his third year at the helm after working as an assistant in the NRL, Hutton began a six-decade connection with the club when appointed coach in late 1957, a position held until the end of 1969-70.
After that he served as director, chairman and president, and was also Great Britain coach, masterminding an Ashes success Down Under in 1962, and president of the Rugby Football League, who admitted him to their Hall of Fame in 2000.
Hutton, who died aged 90 in February 2017 and has a stand at Craven Park named after him, was originally from Prescot, eight miles east of Liverpool, and played as a fullback or centre for Widnes (where former halfback Peters also had a stint) and Hull FC, helping them win the title in 1955-56.
He was 31 and had close to 400 appearances behind him when he moved across the city to the old Craven Park, the club’s home until 1989, to take charge of a team who had generally struggled since the Second World War.
Hutton set about reviving Rovers, and in 1959-60, they were 13th in the 30-strong single division, a first top-half finish since 1931-32.
Two seasons later, there were 17 successive wins at one stage as his side made it to the Challenge Cup semi-finals and ended up eighth in the table.
KR were clearly becoming more competitive, and in 1962-63, the first of two campaigns in which the league was split into two divisions as an experiment which was then to be shelved until 1973, they won the inaugural Eastern Divisional Championship, (the start-of-season competitions either side of the Pennines were introduced to provide additional fixtures).
Favourites Huddersfield were defeated 13-10 in the final at Headingley, where a fortnight earlier, Hutton’s charges had lost 12-2 against Hunslet in the final of the Yorkshire Cup.
Rovers had won each of their first 14 matches in all competitions, and again they reached the last four of the Challenge Cup, eventually making the final in 1963-64, when in the club’s first appearance at Wembley, they were beaten 13-5 by Widnes.
The line-up included fullback Cyril Kellett, centre or backrow Terry Major, versatile back Alan Burwell, scrum-half Arthur Bunting, Devonian winger Mike Blackmore, prop Brian Tyson and hooker Peter ‘Flash’ Flanagan, all of whom were still on the scene in 1966-67.
By that stage, winger Chris Young and another local product, centre John Moore, had fully established themselves (the latter had emerged during the Challenge Cup final campaign but missed out on Wembley selection to the more-experienced David Elliott).
And Hutton had gone into the transfer market to sign prop Frank Fox from Halifax, no-nonsense Cumberland secondrows Bill Holliday and Frank Foster from Whitehaven and Workington respectively.
Having pepped up the pack, shortly before the start of the 1966-67 season, he added a talented playmaker in Roger Millward, a £6,600 signing from Castleford, where the presence of Alan Hardisty and Keith Hepworth meant he had been played on the left wing rather than in one of his preferred halfback roles.
Hutton later observed: “The capture of Roger was something extra special. It did not take us long to realise we had signed a genius. He is quite definitely one of the best three players I have ever seen and I rank only Alex Murphy and Brian Bevan alongside him.”
Millward, who died aged 68 in May 2016, was of course to become a legendary Rovers player and coach (he is, like Hutton, in the RFL Hall of Fame and has a Craven Park stand named after him), and won his first trophy with the club within months of his arrival when he played stand-off in the 25-12 Yorkshire Cup final win over Featherstone, sealed with tries (worth three points apiece) by Young, one of 34 that campaign, Burwell, Moore, Blackmore and Flanagan and five goals from Kellett.
This was a talented team with Great Britain internationals in Millward, Flanagan, Tyson and Holliday and future Lions in Young, Burwell and Foster, and Rovers finished second in the league and reached the play-off semi-finals.
The following season, 1967-68, Hutton’s side, with Phil Lowe emerging as an outstanding secondrow, retained the Yorkshire Cup with an 8-7 victory over Hull FC at Headingley, and after a final placing of third, reached the Championship Final, only to go down 17-10 to Wakefield back in Leeds.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 511 (August 2025)