Recent years may have been lean up Workington way, but there was a time when Town were among the top teams and scoring points for fun.
POINTS make prizes… and in the case of Workington Town at the start of the swinging sixties, a few of them.
The times they were a-changin’, with the UK moving from post-war austerity to a modern, culturally vibrant society.
There was social reform, rising prosperity and new technology, while London became the global centre for fashion and music.
In football, the abolition of the maximum wage represented the start of a shift towards the higher-revenue, higher-stakes commercial industry we know today.
Cricket introduced the limited-overs format, with the Gillette Cup inaugurated in 1963 (the John Player Sunday League was to follow in 1969), in a bid to combat falling attendances.
Rugby league chiefs were similarly concerned about a slowing click of the turnstiles, and clubs gave the green light to the introduction of a two-division system for 1962-63.
Except for some of the war years, the league had been played as a single section since 1905-06, but it was argued there were too many meaningless fixtures, and that promotion and relegation would add interest by creating more jeopardy.
The new format, of a 16-team First Division and 14-strong Second Division, was intended to run for three seasons on an experimental basis (in the event it was kicked into touch after two).
Clubs would play each other home and away, but that led to a shortfall of fixtures since there had been 36 league games apiece, worked out on a mainly geographical format, in 1961-62, after which the top 16, including Workington, formed the top flight for the following campaign.
The solution arrived at was to start the schedule with separate Eastern and Western Divisional Championships, of 16 and 14 teams respectively, in which each played four others, home and away, from the same region but the other division.
The top four in each ‘table’ would then go into play-offs, with first at home to fourth and second hosting third before a final at a neutral venue.
Workington had been one of rugby league’s foremost clubs in the fifties, winning the league title in 1951, when they beat Warrington in the Championship Final, and the Challenge Cup (against Featherstone Rovers) in 1952, reaching Wembley again in 1955 (beaten by Barrow) and in 1958, appearing in both the Challenge Cup showpiece, won by Wigan, and Championship Final (in which Hull FC were triumphant).
And while that powerful side was starting to break up, there was still time for a last hurrah in 1962-63, with coach Billy Ivison’s charges proving themselves the best in the west.
Lively Workington won all eight of their divisional championship home-and-away duels, against Blackpool Borough, Rochdale Hornets, Liverpool City and Salford, to top their section by a point from St Helens, with Widnes third and Wigan fourth.
They therefore faced Wigan in the semi-finals, and having already beaten them 16-8 at Derwent Park in the second round of the Lancashire Cup, this time won 27-9 with the help of a hat-trick of tries by centre John O’Neil.
In the other semi-final, Widnes, who had played Rochdale, Liverpool, Whitehaven and Barrow in finishing third, had won 10-9 at St Helens, and the first Western Divisional Championship final was played at Wigan’s Central Park on Saturday, November 10th.
Workington fielded five players who were involved in the 1958 Challenge Cup Final and Championship Final – O’Neil, half-backs Harry ‘The Architect’ Archer and John ‘Sol’ Roper, prop Norman Herbert and second-row Brian Edgar.
All had topped 200 appearances for the club and Herbert and Edgar were both Great Britain internationals.
The other team members were full-back Sid Lowden, wingers Ray Glastonbury and South African Piet Pretorious, centre Eddie Brennan, hooker Terry Ackerley, prop Bill Martin (another Great Britain international), second-row Matty McLeod and loose-forward Frank Foster.
A crowd of 13,588 turned out to see a tight clash in which defences generally held sway, with Joe Egan’s Widnes bossing possession thanks to the work of stand-off Frank Myler and loose-forward Vince Karalius but struggling to turn it into points.
Widnes did manage a 22nd-minute try through centre Bill Thompson, with full-back Bob Randall adding the goal, but by the break, it was 5-5, with Roper and Brennan setting up Pretorious and Lowden slotting the touchline conversion.
Lowden landed a penalty-goal early in the second half, but Widnes responded with two by Randall, the second from inside his own half, and looked set for victory until with two minutes remaining, Lowden gathered a Randall penalty which failed to find touch, advanced, and dropped a goal (then worth two points) from 35 yards out, making it 9-9.
A Wednesday-afternoon replay was fixed for eleven days later, much to the frustration of Workington, back at Central Park.
The gate this time was only 7,584, but those who did make it down from Cumberland witnessed a brighter performance by a Workington team now wise to Widnes’ preferred tactics of keeping play in the middle of the pitch and crushing their opponents with a continuous barrage.
Dangerman Myler was bottled up, Archer, Roper and Ackerley called the shots, and Workington were 7-0 up at half-time thanks to a Pretorious try and two Lowden goals.
Glastonbury, teed up by the busy Foster, went over in the 67th minute to cement a 10-0 victory and put Workington in the history books alongside the first Eastern Divisional Championship winners Hull KR, who beat Huddersfield 13-10 in their final at Headingley.
That season also featured the introduction of the Mackeson Trophy, designed to reward points-scoring, and while St Helens, runners-up to Swinton in the First Division, took the award for the campaign as a whole with a match average of 18.3, Workington, who after a slump finished 12th in the top flight, won the first two of the five ‘period contests’, with players each time receiving a tankard from the brewers.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 521 (June 2026)