Scratching Shed Publishing

A STORY OF SOCK TAGS AND SELF-BELIEF

As told to Neil Jeffries

Foreword by Allan ‘Sniffer’ Clarke

Imagine a world without ‘Marching On Together’, sock tags and Target Balls…

Imagine a world in which pre-match warm-ups and football shirts with the player’s name on the back never existed…

Imagine a world without Paul ‘The Beaver’ Trevillion… and that would be today’s world.

Although first and foremost an artist, Paul ‘The Beaver’ Trevillion is a man with brilliant ideas. His long career has introduced him to all the world’s leading sportsmen, as well as royalty and politicians, and given him unique insights, drive and self-belief.

Those qualities and ideas he took to Don Revie in 1972, aiming to improve the image of the club and bring the players closer to the fans. Inventions such as sock tags, Target Balls and a hit single that became an anthem are remembered and loved to this day. New concepts including pre-match warm-ups and putting a player’s name across his shoulders proved Trevillion was decades ahead of his time.

In fact everything he suggested worked and together his efforts turned Leeds United into the world’s first modern day football club. And it only took him 50 days. Now, 50 years later, all the incredible secrets of that brief but unforgettable time are revealed…

Size – 218 x 22 x 284. Hardback – 176 pages

by Steve Boothroyd

From the early Cup-winning Bramley National and Hunslet Carr teams, through some outstanding Hunslet and Leeds representative sides, to the modern-day national girls’ champions from Corpus Christi, there is a rich and proud history of schools’ rugby league in the city of Leeds.

The History of Schools’ Rugby League in Leeds catalogues the story of the game in words and photographs – reflecting on the changes, highlighting influential teacher-coaches and administrators, and of course focusing on the many schools and teams that have played the sport since the first organised competitions in the early part of the twentieth century.

By Tony Collins

In 1895, the game of rugby league was born. Ever since, it has brought us thrilling matches, magical players and countless memorable moments. Published to coincide with the game’s 125th anniversary, Rugby League: A People’s History tells the story of the sport in all its glory, from global superstars to local supporters and everyone in between … professionals and amateurs, men and women, officials and volunteers.

It goes back to the start of rugby and explains why rugby league was born, how it grew around the world, and what enabled – and still enables – it to triumph over adversity.
This is more than just a history of rugby league. It is a social history of the life and times of the north of England.

Tony Collins is emeritus professor of history at De Montfort University, whose books include The Oval World: A Global History of Rugby and How Football Began. He has won the Lord Aberdare Prize for sports history book of the year four times, and appeared on many BBC television and radio programmes.

by John Roe, Terry Swift, Ken Pearson and Craig Lingard

The history of Batley Cricket, Athletic and Football Club – later known as Batley RLFC and more recently Batley Bulldogs RLFC – is a very rich one.

From its birth in 1880, evolving from the town’s cricket club that pre-dated rugby football, Batley RFC spent 15 years under the aegis of the Rugby Football Union before severing those links and joining the breakaway Northern Union that subsequently became rugby league.

All of which makes today’s Batley Bulldogs – still known to some as the Gallant Youths – one of the oldest rugby league clubs in the world, playing on a ground that is among the sport’s oldest venues.

From the Mountaintop is the product of a project funded by the National Lottery heritage Fund. A truly collaborative effort, the book is written by the author of 2014’s Sermons from the Mount, John Roe, whose chapters build upon an enormous research effort by Terry Swift.

Terry made extensive use of the National Newspaper Archive to gather and compile an archive of Batley’s very own. It now features over a thousand articles related to the club drawn from more than fifty different titles reaching back to the late nineteenth century. That archive is now a central artefact of the Batley RLFC Heritage Project.

Terry was ably assisted by Ken Pearson, who unearthed additional articles from the archive of the Batley Reporter and Guardian and the Batley News, housed in Batley Library. Finally the club’s current head coach, Craig Lingard, was overall co-ordinator of the project, ensuring the separate elements came together in a seamless fashion.

Contains a foreword by former Batley Bulldogs head coach John Kear.

By Tony Hannan

It’s Britain’s hottest summer since 1976 and cricket is in a sweat of transformation. Audiences no longer care for long-form County Championship fixtures, traditional touchstone of the calendar. They prefer flash, bang, wallop! Or so the experts suppose.
Where though does that leave those twenty minor counties from Newcastle to Norfolk who for the last 125 years have provided a stepping-stone between recreational cricket and the first-class county scene?
Come 2020, the venerable Minor Counties Championship will be blown away like dandelion seeds on the breeze, to be replaced by a freshly branded and ‘more marketable’ National Counties Championship.
Well, that was the plan. In 2018, few had yet heard of Covid-19. What they did know was that their beloved competition was under existential threat and those to blame were at Lord’s, more interested in such innovative concepts as the promised new ‘Hundred’ than bolstering that which had stood the test of time.
Tony Hannan, author of Underdogs, spent what turned out to be the penultimate Minor Counties campaign in the company of Cumberland CCC, amid the dramatic lakes, fells and mountains of Cumbria. And echoing that dramatic terrain, tells a story of ups, downs and a few surprises.
A team of journeymen skippered by Gary Pratt – who famously ran Australia captain Ricky Ponting out during 2005’s Ashes series – are but one thread in a tapestry that is by turns earthy, lyrical and amusing.
The Wicket Men draws stumps on a mostly ignored but emblematic level of cricket, a pastime whose arcane rhythms and rituals are rooted in English folk tradition.