Sporting Aspects
The Huddersfield Double
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU IN 1921 the Welsh Rugby Union picked two full backs for the match against England at Cardiff Arms Paik. One was Ossie Male from Cross Keys. Ossie Male, the almost legendary international, was to play if the day was wet. If it was dry, then they would put in a 17-year-old Cardiff boy named Jim Sullivan, who was as yet untried in internationals but whose promise was swelling like the breast of a tenor before the Eisteddfod. It rained, Ossie Male played, and, at half time the boys ran in with papers saying that Jim Sullivan had signed for Northqm Union. About half of Wales was broken-hearted.
Last Saturday I saw Jim Sullivan break his own heart. He left Cardiff for Wigan. He played for Wigan for twenty-five years. For Wigan he kicked some 3,000 goals. At Wigan he made for himself a reputation as the best full back the game has ever known; and throughout hits twenty-five years as a player, through his few succeeding years as manager, his team was known as great and clean.
Then, this season, Jim Sullivan went as manager to St. Helens, a team which had had its ups and downs but which, with Sullivan's coming, seemed to know nothing but ups. This season they had been beaten only in the final of the Lancashire Cup. They had won the Lancashire League. They had finished top of the Rugby League itself. There, last Saturday, they were at Wembley, hot favourites for the Rugby League Cup; and there, tall and broad and majestic on a bench at the edge of that priceless turf, was Jim Sullivan to see them win.
He saw them lose. Worse, he saw them hooted from the field. Normally, when teams lose, the whole crowd will give them a cheer. Their own supporters cheer out of defiance, the neutrals out of compassion and the visitors out of new-found indulgence, if out of nothing else. But last Saturday at Wembley Jim Sullivan's losing team were hooted as the whistle blew, hooted as they climbed the steps to receive their medals from the Duke of Norfolk, hooted until the last of them had disap- peared, head down, beneath the Eastern terraces.
What had happened ? After two minutes, their opponents' stand-off half received a broken nose. This may have been an accident. After half time, one of their opponents' centre three quarters was sent limping on to the wing where he remained for the rest of the match. This, too, may have been an accident. I did not see. Midway through the second half, their opponents' full back was carried senseless from the field on a stretcher. This was no accident. Though the full back had not even touched the ball, though he was ten to fifteen yards behind the play, he was hit on the chin or in the throat by the stiff arm of a St. Helens gentleman.
At this point I should lay my cards on the table. St. Helens' opponents in this Cup Final were Huddersfield, better known as Fartown; and though Fartown are not as directly alongside my heart as " Town, ' nearly everything that comes from Huddersfield, whether cloth, chemicals, gears, boiler mountings or sport, seems pretty good to me.
Further, Rugby League is no sport for gentle men or women. Though I do not express involuntary " oohs ! ;' as Southern spectators do at the crunch of a Rugby League tackle, I expect this game to be tough. Finally, I am the sort of partisan who assumes, even before the game, that the referee has been bribed and that anyone who supports my opponents has only lately escaped from Broadmoor.
But, even after making all the allowances, it seemed that several St. Helens players and the few St. Helens partisans who sat near me stretched even my elastic 'conventions beyond breaking-point. When I played rugger myself I gave or accepted without complaint the jarring tackle which is intended to put the fear of death into an opponent; but I never hit a man, whether he had the ball or not. As a spectator, my spon- taneous comments are seldom in good taste; but I have never booed an injured opponent who struggled back on to the field. Yet when Huddersfield's full back, Hunter, returned after ten minutes in the dressing-room, two ladies did just that. " There you are 1 He wasn't hurt at all. He was shamming 1 Boo 1 " screeched these two deadlier-than-males.
That blurred what could have been eighty minutes of great- ness for the 90,000.crowd and helped to spoil a memory which should have glowed in us to the end of our days. The scoring began after half an hour when five minutes of continuou§ pressure suddenly exploded Ramsden, the Huddersfield stand- off, at, or, according to the referee, over, the St. Helens line. Devery's kick made it 5-0. Eight minutes later Langfield, who has scored in every match this season, kicked a penalty goal for St. Helens. 5-2. Then, from the kick off, and while the referee was looking at his watch, the St. Helens full back gathered the ball on his own twenty-five, beat three men, passed inside to his captain Greenall, who passed out again to Llewellyn who scored a glorious ,try far out. Five-all at half time was about right.
Eighteen minutes after half time St. Helens went ahead with another glorious try. Huddersfield had been hammering the St. Helens line when Gullick and Greenall broke away, passed and repassed up the field and at last sent Langfield over. 5-8. This was the moment when St. Helens should have swung the game. Their forwards were getting the ball from four out of five set scrums. The Huddersfield attack, with Devery limping out of position on the wing, was beginning to wilt. Victory was opening her golden gates. But Llewellyn shut them again by s • his assault on Hunter. That action not merely roused the Huddersfield players. It threw some 80,000 spectators behind the weakened team, and, before Hunter's stretcher was out of sight, Banks had slipped over from a scrum, Cooper had kicked the goal and the score was 10-8. Seven minutes later and before Hunter's return, Langfield dropped a goal. So there we were. Nine minutes to go and the score ten-all.
Oh those nine minutes 1 When St, Helens looked like scoring I pretended to be busy with my notes. But it was only pretence, for my hands shook so that I could write nothing. Fears and hopes were alike beyond control and so, suddenly, was ecstasy. For with two minutes to go and near the half way, Huddersfield's Bowden broke away and passed to Rams- den who crowned his nineteenth birthday with another great try. Cooper's goal kick made it 15-10, end two minutes later the referee's whistle made it victory.
What more can a man ask of Saturday aftemo6n than to see his team win deserved victory in the last two minutes, than to see a vast neutral crowd acclaim them, than to see their captain, alone at last on the playing-field, holding the cup above his head as though to fill it with the crowd's goodwill ? What more could / ever get when, having watched this scene, I left the echoing stadium to find that Huddersfield Town had won promotion to the First Division that very afternoon ? I can ask, and some day I may get, this—that my team playing at their peak and cleanly, as Huddersfield did last Saturday, may beat opponents playing at their peak and cleanly, as St. Helens did not. Victory, of itself, is not enough. It was spoiled for me when, as the final whistle blew, Jim ,Sullivan lumbered heavily from his bench to shake the referee's hand and then, with arms protectively around his incoming players, stood deliberately sharing the crowd's disdain. I had no anger left in me, and this scene drained me of my joy, I was glad that St. Helens had not humbled Huddersfield, but I was sorry that they had humbled Sullivan.
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