Seen as it's the closed season I thought I'd dwell on that Hunslet game on Friday 18th May 1979. What a night that was as we attempted to be the only Club to win every league game in a season and all that stood in our way was our nearest rivals for most of that season Hunslet. This is how I remembered it.
.........After a couple of pints in the packed Humberside Sportsman’s Club which was then run by my childhood pal Tony Roberts and which was the new ‘guise’ of the old supporters club, we joined 12,424 people crammed into the Boulevard. I went back to my roots that night and watched the game from the Gordon Street end of a packed Threepenny Stand where the atmosphere was electric. Hunslet really did not offer much at all on attack but their tenacious tackling soon subdued even the passionately loud fans around me, as the visitors did everything they could to keep us out. Lloyd, our record breaking kicker, missed four goals in the first half and at half time the scores stood at 1-0 after ‘Knocker’ Norton had dropped a solitary goal. The thorn in our side that night was Tony Dean, a little general and a player who was to sign and star for us two years later. He was known as the ‘drop goal king’ of British Rugby League. Although he missed with two attempts from narrow angles he slid one over from 30 yards bang infront in the second half to level the scores.
It looked likely that the game was going to end in a draw although Hunslet plugged away and another Dean drop goal could never be discounted. Could we lose out at such a late stage? I was ‘in pieces’ in the stand and was hardly able to watch when following a foul on John Newlove, Sammy at last found his kicking boots and slotted over a penalty. We were in the lead at last, but it was still touch and go, with the whole place holding its breath every time Tony Dean got the ball in our half! As first stone and then Birdsall flattened him into the mud when he was thinking about it. It was then left for the most unlikely of hero’s to score the only try of the game and seal a place in the record books. Charlie Stone, who only scored eight tries in 200 appearances for the club, side stepped his way over the line with three Hunslet would be tacklers in attendance and the place erupted as despite Lloyd missing again with the conversion, we were home, we were the champions and now as Vince Farrar and the team paraded the trophy round the ground, we were real record breakers! We were all ready Champions before the game kicked off but Arthur Bunting would not let the trophy be paraded beforehand for fear of it disrupting our focus.
It was certainly not a classic game, but for sheer tension and ultimate ecstasy, with so much at stake, it still ranks as high as any game I can remember at the Boulevard........ AS BP said without teams like Hunsdlet competing and being part of it all over the years the game would not be here today.
