Chapter 9. A set-back

All this creates an impression that the league became huge, but that wasn’t the case. Teams disappeared with as much regularity as they arrived. Siddal, playing at least some of the time at Backhold Lane, were never fully established as a club in this period, not operating every season, and a new phenomenon became clubs switching to Rugby Union, which was seeing something of a rebirth in Halifax. A big loss were long-time stalwarts Elland Wanderers. Wanderers had stepped up to the higher standard Yorkshire Senior Competition, but were disbanded at a meeting at the Savile Arms in September 1926. A new Elland Wanderers Rugby Union club was formed, taking over the Old Earth ground and even the jerseys. They later dropped the name Wanderers and became simply Elland RUFC. Brighouse Rangers, who had folded in 1918, had another revival in 1922 but this time as a Union club at Lane Head. They were quite successful but closed down yet again in 1941, the ground being taken over by the education authorities and a school built on part of the field. Later the junior team at Copley departed to re-emerge in Union for a short time, though did later return to League.

Rugby Union was back with a vengeance. The first team to appear on the scene were Savile Old Boys in 1919, playing at Bermerside, Broomfield. They changed their name to Halifax Old Boys, then in 1923 to Halifax RUFC . They had spells on The Moor, at Spring Hall and Ovenden Cross until they finally settled at Ovenden Park in 1925. Also in 1919 old boys of Crossley & Porter School raised money for land at Broomfield to set up the Old Crossleyans club – Standeven House on the ground was where the school’s boarders lived – though the team did not commence until 1923.

Halifax Vandals started playing in 1924, Heath Old Boys in 1927, while Old Brodleians and Old Rishworthians followed in 1930. What all of them did in the end was establish permanent homes with good club houses. This had never happened in Northern Union, and helps explain why clubs came and went with regularity. But some of those Union clubs also had humble beginnings. Vandals played behind The Maypole pub at Warley, at Ling Bob Farm and at Roils Head before moving up Warley village to the former Sunday School building and finally to their present first-class accommodation. Rishworthians had fields at Pinnar Lane in Southowram, The Barracks, New Lane in Skircoat Green (changing at The Standard of Freedom) and Old Earth before moving to Copley in 1966, Heath Old Boys played at Peat Pitts and Old Brods played on school fields and land which is now the Sandholme Estate before developing the current set-up at Woodhead.

There were other Rugby Union teams at Caldene, formed in 1924 and playing in Mytholmroyd at Brier Hey, but they disbanded in 1937, and later Old Sowerbians, Halifax Collegians (on Francis Street), Dean Clough (at Moss Cottage) and a Duke of Wellington’s XV (at The Barracks), who did not survive for long.

What the Rugby Union clubs often also did well was form second, third and even fourth teams, the latter known as “Extra B”. Although sometimes the butt of jokes, the “Extra B” team provided an outlet for players who might be unfit, old or just not very good. Rugby League never adequately did that; there were probably plenty of such players around, but they would have to come up against good opposition rather than men of a similar standard.

Unfortunately for local Rugby League clubs, as the 1920s came to an end the economic situation in the country worsened, causing problems for a generally working-class based sport. What became known as The Great Depression was to become the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialised western world. The cost of renting pitches, buying equipment and paying insurance grew into huge problems. In 1931 Joe Haigh, the secretary of the Halifax Junior Rugby League, revealed to the press some very worrying statistics. In 1923-4 there had been 20 teams, with 502 registered players, in 1924-5 17 teams with 430 players, in 1925-6 23 teams and 583 players, and in 1926-7 25 teams with 617 players. But in 1927-8 that went down to 14 teams with 316 registered players, in 1928-9 13 teams and 258 players, in 1929-30 10 teams with 258 players, and in 1930-31 just 4 teams with 98 players.

The problem was not Halifax’s alone; it was reported in 1931 that in Huddersfield only Lindley and Honley had open-age sides, when formerly there had been lots, but bearing in mind that Halifax had reached Wembley for the first time in 1930-1, it would have been unsettling. Five of that Cup Final team – Gillie Hanson and Fred Adams (Siddal), Tubby Haigh (Thrum Hall Juniors), Albert Rawnsley (Stainland) and Ernest Norcliffe (Barkisland) – were local league products.

Siddal’s modern-day conveyor belt of professional players was in its very early stages, but in the 1920s included Jack Kitson (1920), Lewis Scott (1920), William Vowles (1922) and Arthur Crossley (1924). In the 1930s there were to be such as Harry Kitson (1931), George Mitchell (1932) and Jackie Gardner (1936).

A problem seems to have been a lack of volunteers to run teams as much as players not willing to turn out. Working men had neither the time nor the experience to organise a club. Conversely, the rugby union clubs thrived, particularly Halifax RUFC, who between 1926 and 1935 won the Yorkshire Cup sx times and produced an England and British Lions international in local boy Harry Wilkinson, the son of a former Thrum Haller. Their success helped them to boost their team for a time by recruiting up-and-coming former rugby league stars like Gillie Hanson and Fred Adams, plus Arthur Gledhill from Pellon Juniors.