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Brighouse Rangers Juniors
The club ran an U19 teams for several seasons alongside U13’s and U11’s.
In the early 1980’s, the club was running an U11 side which included many local lads including Damien Clayton M.B.E. who loved
“the family and community at Rangers. I went to watch my Dad (Richard Clayton) playing”.
Damien played through the age groups in the early 1980’s and remembers how he
“went to watch the first team on a Saturday as a youngster and being taken care of by the older lads. They even took the young lads to Odsal “.
Jeff Greenwood recalls
“that most of the U13 games being in the Leeds area and for one game against East Leeds there were three cars to take the 15 young players across to the game but only Jeff’s to bring them home. He made 3 trips that day!”
As with all clubs running an U19 side, Sunday mornings were always dominated by getting players out of bed to play!
Rangers U19 had a successful season in 1979-80, when they played in the Bradford and Keighley Youth Amateur Rugby League, both League and Cup competitions. They finished 3rd in the League and won the Halifax Cup being victorious over Siddal in the Final. One Sunday morning Keighley Albion U19’s wanted to call off their home game with Brighouse U19 reporting the pitch was frozen. Jeff Greenwood and his team “went anyway” which led to Keighley Albion madly going around trying to raise a team. The pitch was very playable!
The following season, 1980-81, Rangers U19 team repeated their success with a Halifax U19 Cup victory against Siddal. U19 entered the Yorkshire Cup. This was one of the most successful U19 teams from which Nigel Marshall and Scott Wilson signed to play professional Rugby League for Halifax. Scott also went on to play for Halifax at Wembley in the 1987 Challenge Cup final winning side.
In 1982-83, the U19’s played in the West Riding Youth League and finished in 7th position. The same year the under 15’s competed in the U15 B League of the West Riding Youth League and finished in fourth place.
The good form of the U 15’s continued into the 1983-84 season when they were runners-up in the Halifax Cup, losing out to Ovenden in the final by 28-7, and finished 5th in the West Riding Youth League U15 B league. This success was matched by the U17’s who had an exceptional season finishing in first place ahead of local rivals Siddal, Elland and Park Amateurs.
The U17’s followed up their winning season to reach the final of the Halifax U17 Cup in 1984-85. They came up against a strong Ovenden side who eventually won by 26-11.
Brighouse Rangers continued to have junior teams throughout the many seasons that followed.
There were too many teams to mention but they included U7’s, U8’s, U9’s, U11’s, U12’s, U13,’s, U14’s, U15’s, U16’s, U17’s, U18’s and U19’s. Added to this is of course the girls teams at U14’s, U15’s and U16’s plus a senior ladies team.
The U15’s had more success in 2017 when they were the only age group to defeat Siddal in the Halifax Junior Finals which were held at Brighouse. The U15’s were victorious by 24-14. Brighouse were runners up to Siddal in the U13’s and U14’s finals in the same year.
Brighouse Rangers has a good history of girls Rugby League. Several Rangers players went on to play at high level of Womens Rugby League including Emma Ryan and Izzy Northrop who signed for Huddersfield Giants in 2020 and Loren Gregory and Bethany Squire in 2018. The section was reformed after Covid. The Brighouse Rangers Sirens have continued the Womens Rugby League story.