Neil White

To a five year old boy, it was just a brick wall I could see when I looked along the row of houses, a silent shadow, as strange and imposing as Willy Wonka's factory seemed to the young Charlie Bucket, brought to life with lights and crowds every other weekend, when I would watch my father head out for the short walk.

Then something happened which changed my life: my mother got a job at the Wakefield Theatre Club. Variety was king, Martin Dale was the prince, and glamour was a short coat made out of rabbit pelts. And as the lights dimmed in the Theatre Club, the floodlights would go on at Belle Vue, and my father needed to be there. So he did what any father would do with three young children under six on a cold winter evening: he put on our coats and dragged us to the top of the street.

Maybe we didn't have a television, or it saved on the coal bill, I don't know. All I do know is that I was sucked into it, and we spent our Sundays, and mid-week evenings, standing with my uncle and grandfather, watching the first team, and the reserves, and even sometimes the colts.

So the seventies for me are framed by Trinity. It was the age of Aquarius, or so the song would have us believe, but for me it was the age of heroes, of men who were tough and rugged, playing thirty league games a year, plus the Yorkshire Cup, Floodlit Trophy, John Player Trophy, Challenge Cup and Premiership. And this was before the days of interchanges.

My earliest memories of rugby are dark and grim. Perhaps this is because my first experiences of rugby were at night. Or maybe just because life was like that then. Traffic still flowed up Kirkgate and the cathedral was as black as the Chantry Chapel is now. Coal mines dotted most horizons, and you could almost see the dust in the cracked skin of the men who stood on the terraces.

Or maybe it just was dark and grim. Tough men fighting it out on muddy pitches, the smell of linament strong as they made their way past me and into the old dressing rooms behind the East Stand. If I was quick enough, I could pat a player on the back, his back wet but warm, separated from the crowd by a small white barrier.

It made it hard for a young boy whose heroes wore white with red and blue hoops. Leeds United were blazing a trail in those days, with the likes of Johnny Giles and Hotshot Lorimer in the heads of most young boys. I moved to Kettlethorpe in 1971, 19 Rockley Drive, and some of those football memories are still there. Jones to Clarke in '72, and the promise of double pocket money in '73 if they won the cup again. Ian Porterfield cost me 5p (or five new pence, as it was then), and my father shrugged off my plea to his good nature. "A bet's a bet, son." I was eight.

I won it back though, on a dark Sunday teatime, courtesy of Les Tonks, a prop forward who looked like he trained in a brewery, with a large stomach supported by skinny legs and strapped-up knees. My father's first sight of Les Tonks made him giddy: "if he scores a try this season, I'll give you five pence." And it seemed like a safe bet at the time. He would be ballast in the scrum, back in the days when weight was important, and his attacking style was one where he looked relieved just to make it to the defensive line, when he would crumble gratefully to the floor.

I have seen the Porterfield goal many times since. A Bobby Kerr corner, with Porterfield smashing it into the top of the net, David Harvey leaning backwards, his arms reaching upwards. I saw the Tonks try just the once, but I still think I remember it. I'm not sure if someone fell over, or the defence had just learnt to ignore him, but he received the ball a few yards out and shuffled forward to the line, his torso shuddering and heaving with effort, his ritual collapse to his knees taking place on the right side of the white line. If there was a roar, I'm not sure I heard it. A wrong had been righted, and as I looked back to where my father stood, I had tears in my eyes. He smiled and nodded. "A bet's a bet, son." That five new pence was mine.

The seventies are like that for me. Moments, just moments. The years merge, the teams merge, until I am sometimes not sure who played when, at least in the early part of the decade.

I saw Neil Fox play, perhaps the only player from the glory years I saw play in the flesh, but I remember him wearing a Hull KR shirt. The rest of the team were filled with local boys given the job of living in the sixties shadow. I did a paper round for Harold Poynton, if that counted for anything. Seventy five pence a week. I had his picture on a Trinity calendar in my bedroom at the time, but he never even looked at me when he handed me the newspapers. I'm not even sure he knew my name.

I remember fighting my corner at school, trying to make my heroes compete with the legendary Leeds United side of the 70's, but I was something of a lone voice. My heroes were ordinary men.

There was Eric Ingham, the little bald plumber who hooked before the stooping figure of Ray Handscombe made the number 9 jersey his own, his memory living on in the advert on the old wooden stand on the West terrace. It said all it needed to say: "Eric Ingham. Plumber." Don't forget Mick Morgan, the miner, nuggety-tough, dressing room wit. And then there was Les Sheard the teacher, a loose-limbed full back who didn't seem particularly keen on tackling. I preferred his understudy Trevor Midgely, a man I had the privilege of urinating next to at the David Topliss Testimonial Event at Tiffanys, although I will be concerned if he remembers it as vividly as I do.

But still, it's just moments I remember.

David Smith, the flying butcher, from the "run, Forrest, run" school of wing-play, having his nose gashed open at Keighley. Terry Crook, the bow-legged centre, being sent off at Bradford and making his way to the dressing rooms at the top of the bowl, snaking his way through toothless old women waving their fists at him. A 52-0 drubbing at Featherstone one New Years Day. A Boxing Day win at Leeds. 18-8. Touching the Challenge Cup. It was at Tiffany's. I was on my way back from urinating next to Trevor Midgley and it was on a table, majestic and tall. I reached out, just gently, worried that the spark as I touched it would make me jump.

But it was always the other clubs who had the glamour.

I remember Widnes, and it was always Widnes, wrecking any dream of cup glory, from the first round of the cup in 1974, my first trip across the Pennines, to the semi-final of 1975. That's still the only year I can name the Grand National winner, because they announced it at half-time (L'Escargot). It seemed like Jim Mills rampaged through the seventies, with the ever-present Keith Hellewell scurrying around his feet, and they seemed to do it against Wakefield whenever they got the chance.

Wakefield were still filled local boys, but the other clubs had stars. Les Dyl and John Holmes at Leeds, the Jason Kings of the northern pitches. John Bevan at Warrington, with his arm in the air as he scored. Keith Fielding at Salford. He made it to Superstars. It seemed like the other teams had gloss, whereas Wakefield had matt.

But then something different started to happen.

If it had a beginning, I would say it was with a sloped-shouldered scrum half called Lampkowski. He came from the other code, the one that still banned players for life if they set foot on a rugby league pitch. I saw A.N. Other turn out many times in Trinity colours. My father swore blind that one of them was Gerald Davies, the Welsh winger, but he also reckoned he was at school with Les Sheard, and I never saw Les give him a wave.

Lampkowski was a damn good scrum half, almost unique in his style. The scrum halves of the seventies were jinking masters of weave. Roger Millward. Kevin Dick. Terry Hudson. Little men with craft and guile. Lampkowski arrived with a flat nose and steam-rolling style, where he would run at people and just keep running, breaking tackles and off-loading when Keiron Cunningham was still gestating in his mother's womb.

And more followed. Steve Diamond, a curly-haired pretty boy, and Keith Smith, the second part of the trio, pacy and with a step like a fast twitch. Brian Juliffe at number 5 was more direct and strong than Andrew Fletcher, the final piece of the jigsaw, but he was effective. Fletcher was more of a dancer, with a matchstick physique and Crystal Tipps hair.

Lampkowski's was the first running style I tried to mimick, a hunched prowl, but I was a small, skinny kid, so I looked more like I had a back problem than a rugby player. I went with the Trevor Skerrett running style for a while, where the legs kick forward but the knees don't bend, but I looked more Cossack than athlete. I did a Graeme Idle for a while. Not in the sense that I tackled anything that moved, but that I held the ball flimsily in one hand with my wrist curled up, but too many knock-ons ended that habit. I did learn to pass like Terry Hudson, behind my back, but the only people who are impressed are my children.

One of my clearest memories from the seventies is the first time I saw the sporadic genius of Bill Ashurst. It was at Featherstone, his first game for the club. I could say that Wakefield won, but that wouldn't be true. It was Bill Ashurst who won that game, single-handedly. I think it was Good Friday. He did the same against Castleford on Easter Monday, received every ball and ran the show as if he was playing against Walnut Wanderers. I have never seen a performance like that since. The problem was, neither did Wakefield.

He came from Wigan, and a Wigan fan told my father that he was a great player but wouldn't play many games. He was right, although my father may have told this tale with hindsight, along with the "Get That Topliss" tale, which involves Alex Murphy screaming it from a dugout and one of his players obliging shortly afterwards. But Ashurst didn't look a natural athlete, with his greasy flick and bandaged knees, although when he played, he was sensational.

I had moved to Bridlington by this time, but that didn't diminish the fervour. I would cadge a fiver from my father and set off on my own on the four hour bus trip, and the four hour trip back. The last bus back to Bridlington came after an hour or more of drinking tea with the winos in dodgy cafes in Leeds. It was no life for a twelve year old on his own, but maybe the world was different then.

Ashurst's swansong, or at least this is how I remember it, came after the coming together of the greatest sporting sequence in my Trinity memory: Topliss to Smith to Fletcher.

The semi-final of the Challenge Cup in 1979. Wakefield were ahead, on their way to Wembley for the first time since Don "poor lad" Fox entered into the national sporting memory. But then St Helens scored a late try, and it was a disaster. It had been a tight, low-scoring game, and that try sealed it for Saints.

Or so everyone thought.

David Topliss found a gap and sprinted towards the half-way line. Keith Smith was on his right, Andy Fletcher coming up hard on him. There was a centre ahead. Topliss commited the man and the ball went to Smith. He accelerated away, Fletcher on his wing, the try-line in front of the East Stand at Headingly still forty metres away. Just the full-back to beat. Smith feinted to the left, just a twitch of the shoulders, but the full back went with him, just a step, and then the ball flew to Fletcher, who streaked to the line. The final whistle went. Wakefield were going to Wembley.

My uncle was one of the first onto the pitch, a serving policeman, the first over the wall and lifting Andy Fletcher into the air, a fag in his mouth, live on national television.

I wasn't at the game. I had a Saturday job in Bridlington then, in a bakers shop, and I finished too late to get to the game. But I saw it live, and I nearly punched a hole in the ceiling when Fletcher caught that ball. I went to the bathroom, embarrassed by my tears. Topliss to Smith to Fletcher. Remember those words.

I won't dwell on the Wembley final. I was there, but it was a poor game, a poor view, and a poor result.

And so here I am, thirty years on, treading the same terraces, buying food from the same white hut, lamenting the same failed dreams. My uncle still goes, now in his 70's, but I reckon he will still be the first onto the pitch if we win a cup semi-final again. My father drifted away and became a taproom fan, now watching the Sky games on a washed-out big screen somewhere in Bridlington. I don't live in Wakefield anymore, I haven't since 1977, apart from a short stay before I went to university, so the games for me mean a trip across the Pennines. But I still make the trip.