The decade began with a hundred Yorkshire clubs playing regular
fixtures. That number hadn’t increased by very much at the end of the 1938/39
season but the number of clubs fielding more than two teams had. When the
handbook for the 1939/40 season was sent to print eight clubs hadn’t submitted
a fixture list in time for publication which meant that there could have been in
excess of a hundred clubs playing fixtures. However, when the Second World War
began on 3rd September 1939 all the fixtures listed in the handbook
were cancelled and even when permission was given, later in the month, for
clubs to organize games many Yorkshire clubs had decided to close down for the
duration of hostilities.
When you
flick through the County handbooks for the 1930s you get a picture of a sport
that had recovered from the terrible impact of World War One and is now
thriving. The ‘rush to rugby’ that had occurred in the 1920s had a big impact
on participation in the sport. In most seasons entries in the Yorkshire Cup
approached a hundred and the majority of Yorkshire clubs were able to field at
least two teams regularly, with three or four sides taking the field at some
clubs. Headingley, probably the strongest club in Yorkshire, would on most
weeks of the season be able to turn out a fifth team. Many of the players who
featured regularly in the junior teams were very unlikely to ever progress to
the first XV although there must have been some young players in those teams
who did hope to eventually play first team rugby. If there was no real prospect
of ever playing in the first team for the majority for players at the senior
clubs why did they turn out every week? I think the reason many young men were
happy, in the 1930s, and probably right up until the formation of the leagues
in the late 1980s, to play thirty plus games of rugby a season may well have
been because the choice of leisure activities was much more limited than it is
today. There is probably little doubt that once a young man started playing for
the club of his choice he probably remained loyal to that club irrespective of
which team he was playing for. He would probably build his social life around
the rugby club and expected to play rugby every Saturday from the beginning of
September until the end of April. The ambitious players and those that had
played first XV rugby at the top public schools generally gravitated to clubs
like Headingley, Bradford or Otley as those clubs had fixtures outside the
County and often provided a majority of players for the Yorkshire team as well
as some players who received international caps. The majority of players at the
top clubs were also loyal and many remained at the same club their entire
playing career taking on administrative and committee roles after they retired
from playing.
In the days
before leagues were introduced into Rugby Union, clubs organized their own
fixtures. The club fixture secretary would negotiate with other club fixture
secretaries and agree dates and venues for the forthcoming season. In some
cases, where two clubs had a long standing arrangement, fixtures would be
agreed for more than one season. Ambitious clubs were always looking to improve
their fixture list by agreeing a fixture against one of the senior or big
clubs. Headingley, in Yorkshire, was seen as a senior club as were clubs
outside the County such as Leicester or Northampton. If a club trying to improve
its fixture managed to agree a fixture with one of the stronger clubs the game
would need to be competitive and played in a good spirit for regular fixtures
to be agreed in the future.
The club
scene in Yorkshire was healthy in the 1930s with the leading ‘senior’ clubs
continuing to look for opportunities to improve their fixtures. Headingley had
a number of big names in their fixture list. Clubs like Leicester, Bedford,
Northampton and Oxford University were happy to travel to Clarence Field to face
Yorkshire’s strongest club and there is little doubt that the visits of those
big names were eagerly anticipated. Roundhay, the other strong club in the
Leeds area, hadn’t got a fixture list to match that of Headingley but did play
clubs outside the County such as New Brighton, Heaton Moor and Instonians.
Otley also had an impressive fixture list with Hartlepool Rovers, Sale and
Durham City all playing regular fixtures against the Cross Green outfit.
Bradford, probably vying with Headingley to be regarded as the top Yorkshire
club, attracted some big names to Lidget Green such as Edinburgh Academicals,
Birkenhead Park and Blackheath.
The
majority of Yorkshire clubs rarely played opponents from outside the County
apart from perhaps on an Easter tour, a very popular feature of most clubs
fixtures right up to the 1980s. There were ambitious clubs, Wakefield being a
good example that arranged fixtures outside the County and usually managed to
attract Broughton Park, West Hartlepool and Durham City to College Grove. Huddersfield
Old Boys, probably because of their geographical location, were another club that
looked for fixtures further afield, Tyldesley, St Helens, Sale and Heaton Moor
featuring regularly in the Old Boys fixture list.
Some of the
leading Yorkshire clubs in 2020 such as Rotherham, Doncaster and Upper
Wharfedale had in the 1930s, fixture lists that included only the second and
third teams of some of the senior clubs in the County. While, in contrast,
Hornsea ,who now play in the Merit leagues, ran three teams most seasons and
had clubs like Roundhay, Hull and East Riding and Scarborough in their fixture
list.
At the end
of the decade and the outbreak of World War Two more than half the Yorkshire
clubs decided that they wouldn’t be able to find sufficient players in order to
play regular fixtures. Of the clubs that did play in the 1939/40 season a
number only played a handful of games before deciding to close down. The
beginning of the 1940/41 season saw less than thirty clubs attempting to play
regular fixtures. The 1930s, a decade that began with such optimism for the
sport based on the massive increase in participation, ended with many people
fearing that rugby and the Country they lived in would never be the same again.