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  • The Red Read Robin

Doing what i did again


“Do you want to see a real rugby match?” Tommy whipped round to face me, blond hair sticking up and blue eyes able a with indignation,

“I play in real rugby matches, Grandma,” he answered and I could see I had made a grave error; unforgiveable to a six-year old who has recently taken to the field in his first competitive rugby league match.


“Of course you do,” I rushed on, “but I mean the sort you watch on TV with your Dad, in a proper stadium with grown-ups playing. We’ll go and see Rovers’ next match at Craven Park if you like. See if you like it and, if you do I’ll get you a season pass”.


Aware that I was gabbling on, I stopped and waited for this to sink in.


Tommy was my only hope of going to Craven Park to see Hull Kingston Rovers again in the sport that had meant so much to me when I was his age. I saw my first match when I was a little older than him but my love of rugby started way before that, on Holderness Road, on alternate Saturday afternoon when my Dad and his brothers went to the old Craven Park and I was left to do the shopping with my mother. I had no interest in what was in the rows of shops we walked past, all my attention was on the noise coming from inside the stadium.


“Sounds like Rovers have scored”, my mother sometimes said, “there’s a lot of excitement going on”.


I hadn’t a clue then what she meant but I wanted to be in there so badly. I had to find out what I was missing and eventually, when it became clear that I was not going to be included in any of these bi-weekly excursions, I asked my Dad to take me.


“Girls don’t go to rugby,” was my his astonished reply,

“Why?” I asked, but that question remained unanswered.


I wasn’t easily deterred and kept on asking as well as nattering at my uncles and grandfather until my Dad had no choice but to let me tag along. It was clear that “tag along” was all he was going to allow me to do, no doubt in the hope that I wouldn’t want to go again. I followed the men down Aberdeen Street, having to run most of the way to keep up. Once outside a gap in the long row of houses he thrust a handful of coins into my hand and pushed me through a gate marked “OAP’s and Boys 1/6d”.


“What if they see I’m a girl?” I asked but he had disappeared through another turnstile.

I had got this far and wasn’t about to fail now so I bravely faced the man in the booth who took my money, smiled and let me through. I stared at the scene in front of me in wonder. I had no pre-conception of what I would see once inside.


Life was different in the 1950’s. There was no mention of “stranger danger”, no fast food on sale, no Health and Safety rules, no Child Protection Laws, in fact, no need to be looked after so, when I emerged from the turnstiles, there was no sign of my Dad.


There didn’t seem to be many people about; how could so few make all the noise I’d heard from outside? To the right was a tin roof covering concrete steps and to the left, a similar arrangement but without a roof over it. A few small groups of people were standing about and I couldn’t see any other girls. A huge grass rectangle filled the centre while a much higher roof, covering more steps and rows of seats rose at the other side. There were yet more open steps at the other end and a curiously shaped building proclaiming itself to be Tote, whatever that was. There was a space all the way around the grass rectangle which looked a bit like the running track we had to race around at school but nobody seemed to be allowed on this one.


Slowly the steps and seats started to fill up and the noise grew. My Dad and his brothers reappeared and stood on a high up step not far from where we had come in. Perhaps they kept any eye on me but I felt I was on own with no idea what was going on. Players ran around the grass in different coloured shirts. They knocked each other down and got covered in mud. The noise level rose when a line of them thundered one way or the other, throwing the ball to each other. Sometimes, the ball was slammed down at the end of the field the shouts would get louder and louder and carry on and on but other times it would go very quiet and I heard some very rude words shouted out. At the end, when people started leaving and the muddy players had gone in, I found my Dad or maybe he found me. I walked home behind him, listening to the heated discussion about what they had just seen.


“Kellett played a blinder”.

“Their try was a forward pass; that ref must have come on their bus”.


Strangers joined in, agreeing or arguing; it was difficult to tell the difference; and I was swallowed up in the middle of it all trying my best to remember everything I wanted to ask my Dad later. Finally, reluctantly, his love of the sport overcame his unwillingness to have an eight year old daughter tagging along and he taught me the basics Rugby League.


As time went on I met up with other kids in the ground; my cousins and their friends started going and we wandered round from one end to the other depending which way Rovers were playing. What I had thought was a running track was for the greyhound racing and, if we stood close to it, we were so close to the players that we could hear their grunts as the breath was knocked out of them in a tackle. Other times, we would go to the back of the East Stand where we could see into the tram shed through the broken planks. Bus drivers sat on the top deck of their buses to get a free, if somewhat limited, view of the match and asked us who had scored. Often, we tried to cause trouble among the away supporters by saying disparaging things about their players before collapsing in fits of giggles.


“Their prop-forward looks too slow to catch a cold”,


This was usually when Rovers were getting heavily defeated, something which seemed to happen a lot in those days. None of that mattered, of course. Every player was a hero to me. I knew my Dad always stood in the same place in the East Stand and found him at the end of each game.


Weekends when Rovers played away matches were very long and meant shopping on Holderness Road with my mother had to be endured again. The off-season seemed endless.


The years rolled on into the 1960’s when there were school friends and boyfriends to go with. When I was in the sixth form there was a special game against the all-conquering Australian team. I went with a group of school friends, all proudly wearing our newly acquired sixth form scarves which were designed to mimic university scarves. The school colours were green and gold and, much to our dismay, there were also Australia’s colours.


In the early 1970’s I got married and started a family. My Dad still tried to get me to go through the gate marked “OAP’s and Boys”, while he went to his usual place with my husband. I think it had gone up to 2/6d by then.


For years I hardly missed a match.


“Why any woman would want to go and watch that lot is beyond me”, my mother complained every time I asked to babysit.


“Have you ever been?” I often asked, knowing she never had and the subject was dropped until the next time. My greatest thrill was getting to Wembley to watch the famous 10-5 victory over Hull FC just four weeks after my youngest daughter was born in 1980. I was heavily pregnant when the build-up to the final took place. My friend and I watched the semi-final while our men-folk went to the match.


“We’re all going to Wem-be-ley”, sang the Rovers’ supporters.


“So am I”, I shouted at the screen. Linda begged me to stop jumping up and down in case I started in labour.


“How can you go?” she asked. “Its only six weeks away and you’re not due for another three”.


“I’ll be there, don’t worry”. I promised.


When the baby hadn’t come by the time the tickets went on sale my husband reluctantly agreed not to go while all our friends and family bought their tickets. I began to worry but never gave up hope. A fourth baby girl came into our lives four weeks before the Final. I had willing baby-sitters aplenty but no ticket and both Hull FC and Rovers had sold out. My mother lived in the village where one of the players had the village pub. Ama ingly, she rang him and explained our plight. Without question, he put four tickets behind the bar for her and we took for two nephews while my sister-in-law looked after the children. We had to do the whole trip in one day but it was well worth it.


Later in the 1980’s everything changed. My husband left me with four children between the ages of seven and thirteen without a shred of interest in rugby between them and a manic golden Labrador. I didn’t relish going on my own and the friends I had gone with in my youth had now mostly moved away. Like them, I could only read the results in the paper or listen to coverage on radio, when, inevitably, it would be interrupted at vital moments by a screaming child. For years there was no prospect of seeing a game.


Craven Park moved to a new location and was replaced by a supermarket. The East Hull and Holderness Road of my youth had all but disappeared.


By the turn of the century the children had grown up and left home. My Dad died and I moved in with my elderly mother. Grandchildren came into my life and I spent a lot of time helping with child-care.


History repeated itself as four granddaughters appeared in quick succession and there were serious doubts as to whether our branch of the family would every produce a boy, the last one being my grandmother’s brother who was born around 1890.


Then Tommy came along, the youngest child of my youngest child. It had been a long wait but the moment I held all 9 pound 3 ounces of him in my arms I felt certain I had my way back into rugby and it wasn’t long before I was proved right.


He was almost three and a hyperactive toddler when his mother waved a leaflet at me,

“Holderness Vikings Rugby Club are advertising Saturday morning training sessions for 3-5 year olds”, she read, “do you think I should take our Tommy? It might give him a bit of an outlet for all that energy”.


I could have jumped for joy but didn’t want to appear too eager.

“Give it a try”, I said. “I hope he likes it”.

Her first attempt didn’t go well. “He just refused to go onto the pitch”, his mother moaned.


“Why didn’t you go with him?”

“I daren’t go. I don’t know anything about it”.

This time I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm.

“I’ll take him next week”, I offered, “You come as well”.


The next week Tommy and I ran up and down the small, marked out square of grass, passing, catching and tackling tiny tackle bags. Within a year, I was a Level One Coach for “Cubs” as the three to five year olds were known.


Those were happy days, coping with an ever-increasing number of little boys. We practised all the moves I had seen in my youth on the muddy Craven Park pitch and I was fitter that I had ever been but now, Tommy was out of my hands, playing for the 5-6 year-old’s team which was coached by an ex-rugby player. I held my breath while I waited for his reply. Would I be able to move on beyond teaching little boys? To get back to seeing real matches and relive my youth?


Tommy looked at his mother and she nodded her encouragement. Then he turned to me and uttered the words I had so longed for,

“Yeah, when can we go? Can I wear my Rovers kit?”


The first match we went to was on a bitterly cold day but Tommy wanted to show off his Rovers’ shirt and refused to fasten his coat. Very little seemed to have changed, Perhaps the stands were a little more substantial than the old Craven Park and the facilities a little more modern but the same thrill went through me as I sang “Red, Red Robin” as it had nearly fifty years earlier. Tommy shivered most of the time as he stood by my side in the East Stand, but he never spoke nor moved a muscle during the entire game, only giving a brief nod each time I asked if he was alright. It wasn’t a great game for a Rovers fan as they were behind all the time but, in the dying moments, Josh Mantellato scored a penalty from the touchline bringing the scores level and the noise level rose alarmingly. I couldn’t help yelling and throwing my hands high above my head but Tommy still stood, fixed to the spot. I was worried. If he didn’t like it, would it be a long time before I could persuade him to go again?


We walked away after applauding the players off the field. I took the hand of the silent little boy by my side to guide him through the crowd. At last he spoke,

“When can we come again?” he shouted above the noise of the departing fans, “did you see that pass . . ., that tackle . . . that try . . .?” The conversation continued long after I had left him in the care of his Mum and Dad, recounting every move of the game until he was finally persuaded to go to bed.


Rugby was back in my life.


BARBARA OSWALD

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