Wednesday 28 November 2012

What would they be worth today?

Is this the best ever Yorkshire Junior team?


Yorkshire beat Cumbria by 65 points to 7 and Lancashire by 28 points to 20 to win the 1981-82 Under 17 County Championship.

How many members of the Yorkshire team went on to play for Great Britain?

Five members of the Yorkshire Under 17 team went on to play for Great Britain. They are Garry Schofield 46 caps, Roy Powell 19 caps, Deryk Fox 14 caps David Creasser 4 caps and Gary Divorty 2 caps. Vince Gribben, from the Cumbria team, made one appearance for Great Britain.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Kent Invicta Part Three


By November 1983 Kent Invicta was bankrupt and had to be taken over by Jim Thompson, the Chairman of Maidstone United soccer club. As the season continued problems with sharing the ground with the soccer club and wear and tear on the pitch meant that when Southend United approached Jim Thompson with an offer to take the club to their Roots Hall Stadium it was readily accepted. Kent Invicta disappeared from the rugby league scene at the end of the 1983/84 season
Sadly, Southend Invicta was also only in existence for just one season, 1984/85. Attendances at their Roots Hall  ground often struggled to reach three figures and for their final home game, against Huddersfield on 26th April 1985, the attendance was recorded at just 85 spectators.
If you are interested in reading more about Southend Invicta I suggest you look at Peter Flower's Southend Invicta website at www.peterflower.tripod.com Peter has done an excellent job of recording Southend's only season as members of the Rugby Football League.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Kent Invicta Part Two

The attendance for the opening game, on 21st August 1983, against Cardiff City was 1,815, a promising start. However, after that the only other attendances in four figures were 2,107 for the John Player Trophy game, on 6th November 1983, against St Helens and 1,643 for the Challenge Cup game against Castleford, on 11th February 1984.
After the opening fixture against Cardiff, attendances declined with the majority of League games attracting less than 700 spectators.

When the final game of the season was played on 12th May 1984, a re-arranged fixture against Rochdale Hornets, just 412 spectators were in attendance.
The Rochdale game should have been played on 25th March 1984 but was postponed because of a waterlogged pitch. Bob Fox, the Invicta secretary, is pictured on the programme cover below inspecting the pitch before the game was called off.

The team for the game against Barrow is listed below.


The Kent Invicta team included two current Super League club Chief Executives Steve Ferres and Gary Hetherington.

More about Kent Invicta in Part Three