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Scratching Shed Publishing

Batley

The Heavy Woollen Victories 1973/2010

By John Roe – with an introduction by Craig Lingard

Batley and Dewsbury are the professional rugby league clubs whose grounds are in closest proximity to each other, only a couple of miles apart, or thereabouts. In fact, Dewsbury’s stadium is located only just beyond Batley’s official boundary, both towns part of West Yorkshire’s Heavy Woollen District.
Batley RLFC’s ‘glory years’ were most definitely before World War One, although the club did manage to win the Championship trophy in 1924.
Dewsbury, their first Challenge Cup win coming in 1911-12, then had to wait 31 years to win it again, when the final was over two legs in 1943.
After which, the 1950s and 1960s were, for the most part, lean years for both Heavy Woollen clubs.
In the end, Batley had to wait rather longer than Dewsbury for another taste of success, the latter lifting the Championship trophy in 1973, the former winning the Northern Rail Cup in 2010.
This book’s author, John Roe, was born and raised in the area, a rugby league fan from the age of eight. Here in these pages, he brings together a collection of colourful reminiscences of the supporters, administrators and players of both clubs who were there – or at least watching on television!

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From the Mountaintop: An Archive History of Batley RLFC

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.

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