IT IS somewhere between appropriate and ironic that Sheffield Eagles should be fighting for their lives on Wembley weekend.
I’m writing a few days before the Challenge Cup final, so it is possible that some benefactor on a white horse has come riding out of the South Yorkshire sunset by now and that everything is going to be alright after all.
Possible, but I wouldn’t count on it.
It’s ironic because Wembley was supposed to be the making of the Eagles; instead, it was their destruction.
It is 18 years now since they came to the stadium and achieved the biggest shack result ft the history of the event by beating the unbackable favourites, Wigan.
Surely that would mean lift-off for the Eagles?
If they could do something as memorable as that, even a city with a heart of stainless steel would take them to that heart.
They probably attracted and kept a few dozen extra fans; apart from that, Sheffield still didn’t want to know them.
And it was no longer worth saying: ‘Ah yes, but if they could only win somethings…’
To have made that breakthrough and still be ignored, that was what really hurt, especially for a club which had done to much right, on and off the field.
I had always had a soft spot for the Eagles, partly because they were conceived as something close to a players’ collective, which seemed a realistic model at the time.
I was there when they played their first game at Owlerton and when they had two of their most memorable victories, over World Champions Widnes in the old First Division and over the Western Reds in the World Club Challenge, both at the Don Valley.
My son still counts himself as a Sheffield Eagles supporter, although that has more to as with Hughie Waddell once giving him post-match sandwiches – very fussy about his low-fat spread, Hughie – rather than any rugby consideration.
They tried to sacrifice the Eagles to keep both them and Huddersfield alive, if only as some ghastly science fiction creation known as Shuddersfield.
They survived even that and continued to be competitive against all the odds, up until last season.
I sense that, over the last 12 months, it has all got too much for them. Their search for a new backer has taken on an increasingly desperate tone.
I hope they find a lifeline. This is not the time to fold their wings. The timing is too poignant.
Not the only ones…
LEST WE FORGET, there was another club we thought had turned the corner by getting to Wembley.
The year after Sheffield’s great achievement, the London Broncos reached the final.
“This is it,’ said the advocates of a club in the capital, myself included. ‘This is the breakthrough.’
It turned out to be nothing of the sort, of course. They were beaten 52-16 by Leeds and London cold-shouldered them even more pointedly thereafter.
It proved one thing; one memorable afternoon is not a launchpad for a successful future. I just wish there had been a less painful way of learning that lesson.
Its a ‘b-y-e’ for Stevo
THIS will have been the last Challenge Cup final to be attended in a professional capacity by Mr. Michael Stephenson.
I can’t see him just slipping away quietly, but the old rogue deserves our best wishes anyway.
I wonder how long it will be before letters start to appear in the rugby league press bemoaning his absence and getting all dewy-eyed over the days of ‘proper’ commentators?
Mind you, he does leave an awkward legacy. What will become of all the words and phrases he has made distinctively his own? Are they to be left as defenceless orphans?
I have applied for custody of the term ‘stanza’, which would otherwise be left abandoned in some windy shop doorway like an unwanted baby.
There could be a competition for that one.
Already, orchestral conductors and poets struggling in their garrets routinely refer to those difficult introductory bars or tricky first verses as ‘the softening-up period.’
Funny thing, the English language; it cuts both ways.
On our high horse…
AS I WRITE this, the brave bays and girls of our Olympic team are arriving back in Britain, lugging twice their body-weight of precious metals around their necks on ribbons.
The four-yearly celebration of every sport an earth except rugby league has been a huge success for Great Britain, without a doubt – oops, there’s a bit of Stevo sneaking into the the ceremony!
One event in which I was not surprised by our triumph, however, was the pommel horse. We should always win that one, in my humble opinion.
The reason I say this is that every school gym in the country has a pommel horse. Not only that, but none of them have anything else.
One thing puzzles me, though. Where did they hide the soil when they were digging their way out of Colditz?
Maybe there is some confusion here with the vaulting horse. No doubt all will become clear in time for Tokyo (blimey, is it their turn again so soon?) in 2020.
