When Blaydon RFC first played on their Stella ground, next to the river Tyne, they lost a couple of balls in the river. Thereupon they engaged a boatman, J. Gardiner, on 17th January 1920. On the first Saturday the wisdom of this action was seen when a high wind carried the ball into the coaly Tyne on three occasions. The boatman received one shilling per week. Blaydon stayed at Stella until 1951, and although history does not record the total savings made for the club by the boatman they were able to raise the £350 to purchase Crowtrees!

That story prompted an article in the Tynedale RFC programme for the match against Bradford & Bingley played on 1st April 2006. Earlier that season, on the 10th December 2005, Tynedale had played the reverse fixture against the B’s at their Bingley ground. The 2006 Tynedale programme recorded the following exchanges from that day:-

A conversation with a Bees supporter at half-time was interesting. The gentleman’s job was to stand beside the river Aire, on the far side of the pitch from the B&B clubhouse, and wait for balls to be kicked into the water. On average he reckoned that he had to retrieve the balls three times during a 1st XV match – saving the club about £100 per week if he got the balls back at least twice.

The gentleman looked at the half-time scoreboard, which showed Bradford & Bingley leading by 38 points to 7 - for 40 minutes Tynedale had been blitzed. The only time in the season that Tyne had been completely outclassed by the opposition.

“You need a quick try when the game restarts, and to start putting in your first-time tackles and you could still make a match of this” he said. From a depressed Tynedale - utter disbelief and a look to check whether he was joking, or worse, being patronising – but he wasn’t. He just wanted to talk about the river Aire, its journey from Malham Tarn and the disastrous flooding of the Bees clubhouse and ground five years earlier. (The two clubs have much in common relating to rivers and flooding!!!).

He had spent part of his National Service in an artillery regiment based at Fenham Barracks and on Sandy Lane, north of Gosforth, and he had played mid-week rugby matches against Percy Park, Northern and Durham City – so he had fond memories of rugby clubs in the north-east of England. It was assumed that this had coloured his view on Tynedale’s chances in the current match!

After the game the scoreboard showed a narrow 38-29 victory for Bradford and Bingley after Tyne completely dominated the second half, but his comments were not then of the “I told you so” variety. No, all he said was “another ten minutes and you would have won that match”, and off he went.

A few years later the Tynedale club received a letter from Keith Loftus from Shipley, enclosing a copy of that article from the 2006 match programme. It transpired that the gentleman concerned was Colin Charlton. While on holiday on a Greek island Colin had suffered a massive stroke. He had been air-lifted to Athens where he lay in a coma for seven weeks before he died.

Keith was a Bradford & Bingley friend of Colin’s. The article in the Tynedale programme had captured Colins character to such an extent that Keith had read out the story at the funeral. The widow, Shirley, had asked Keith to write to Tynedale to thank the club on her behalf.

D.F.Hamilton

‘A STORY WITH A SAD ENDING’ - SEQUEL

A chat with Nick Patterson, the current Chair and President of Bradford & Bingley RFC, has prompted the following additional points of interest on the above story.

• The man who read from a Tynedale match programme as part of his eulogy for his friend Colin, was Keith Loftus. He was known as Lofty at Bradford & Bingley. He too died, in September 2013. Keith was a singular character, whose party piece involved imitating Frank Sinatra. Mourners at his funeral were not at all surprised to hear Frank Sinatra’s dulcet tones floating through the air, but were very surprised to learn that it was Lofty singing at his own funeral !
• The Bees’ penchant for pet names meant that Lofty’s friend, Colin Charlton, was known as Chuck. Why he had that nickname nobody knows. Chuck’s widow, Shirley still supports the Bradford & Bingley team and she and two more widows of old Bees’ members still meet at every home match.
• The river Aire has been even more cruel to Wagon Lane than the Tyne has been to Tynedale Park. The devastating floods of the Bees ground and clubhouse in 2000 meant that the pitches were unplayable because of contamination. Matches had to be played at Keighley for 18 weeks until the all-clear was issued.
• At Tynedale Park there had been minor floodings affecting the spectator stand and parts of the grounds before, but the first flooding which swamped the clubhouse to a depth of over a metre was on the 8th January 2005 when the river rose to a height of 5.14m. The playing surface was given the all-clear and the dressing-rooms and showers were cleaned and disinfected, so training and matches were able to re-start that weekend. However, three portakabins had to be brought on site to provide kitchen and catering facilities. Bradford & Bingley also suffered, but for them worse was to come.
• The 2015 floods hit Wagon Lane on Boxing Day. The car-park and clubhouse were completely inundated. A car was written off; fittings and carpets were destroyed.
• At Tynedale the critical date was 5th December 2015 when storm Desmond struck. The Tyne rose to 5.8m, a record. Portakabins were not an alternative this time, as the hiring companies could not obtain insurance cover, so although the grounds were fine, 1st XV matches had to be played elsewhere, and Newcastle Falcons came to the rescue. The team played at Kingston Park on their artificial surface for 16 weeks, until the Corbridge clubhouse was reinstated.

Some other interesting facts about that match on the 10th December 2005.
• Bradford & Bingley’s only loss so far that season had been a 3-25 defeat at Macclesfield. They were to lose only one more match, 10-29 at Fylde. The Tynedale v Bees match in April 2006 that same season ended in a 22-22 draw.
• The Bees web-site after 10th December 2005 described the Bees first half display as ”40 minutes of the best rugby seen at Wagon Lane in many years” and “it was the home support who were nervously watching the clock tick down the final minutes”.
• Jonny Leota, a Samoan, (cousin of Wasps’ Hooker Trevor Leota; Jonny went on to play for Sale for a number of seasons) was playing his first game for the Bees. Even he was outshone by a teammate, a Kiwi, Joseph Heta, at scrum -half.
• Ben Duncan scored two tries for Tyne, but Will Massey, a Holy Islander trying to outdo a Pacific islander, scored a hat-trick of tries.
• The Bees won promotion to National Two that season with 110 points, well ahead of Nuneaton ((97 points), Blaydon (95) and Tynedale (80).