102 years ago on Wednesday, the First World War came to an end following the signing of an armistice between the Allied Forces and Germany. To mark Remembrance Sunday, Club Historian Bill Dalton looks back at life for Hull FC during the Great War.
The 1914-15 season began amid great unease in the country as war had been declared on Germany. On June 28th 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, along with his wife, was assassinated in Sarejevo by Gavril Princip, a 19-year old member of a gang of assassins organised by the Black Hand.
A young Gustav could not have realised how much his actions would alter the way of life around the globe, including for the Northern Rugby Union clubs, players and supporters several hundred miles away in the North of England.
The result was that the central powers (the Austro-Hungarian Empire, together with their Allies which included Germany) and the Allies (countries allied with Serbia, which included Great Britain) declared war on each other, in an effort to defend their respective empires.
At first, it was widely felt that the war would not last long, there was virtually no aggression to be seen and life in general carried on normally. The football season managed to reach a conclusion, but the next three years were a different story altogether.
Millions were slaughtered in this “War to end all Wars”. There was hardly a facet of life as the country knew it that was not to be radically altered. The promised reward in the aftermath of “homes fit for heroes” in reality soon transpired into a situation of “heroes fit for homes”
Hull started their post-cup winning era in good fashion, and had a similar league record to the previous campaign, winning 24 and drawing 1 of the 36 matches – the highest number of games played by any club in the league. Unfortunately, because of the imbalance in the fixtures, Hull finished 5th on percentages and missed out on the play-offs.
The Yorkshire Cup Final was reached after accounting for Hull K.R 11-5 and Batley 7-0, both at the Boulevard. It was perhaps the worst possible period in history, though, for any team to be pitted against Huddersfield in a final. This was the season of their four-cups achievement and the 31-0 score-line against Hull was their lowest in the three finals which they contested.
They beat Leeds 35-2 in the Championship Final and St Helens in the Challenge Cup 37-3. The right-wing three-quarter partnership of Albert Rosenfeld and Tommy Gleeson scored 82 tries between them during that campaign and Gleeson missed 12 games! The left flank pair, Harold Wagstaff and Stanley Moorhouse only managed 72.
Debate has, and always will, rage as to which team was the best and it probably will come down to the different eras being brought into the equation when settling this sort of debate. There can be little doubt, however, that that Huddersfield team – “The Team of all the Talents” – was by far the greatest over a long period of the game’s history.
For Hull who, as a team, scored a (then) record 770 points in all matches, a new try-scoring record was set by Jack Harrison of 52 in the season from his ever-present 43 appearances. The nearest challenger to that – Tevita Vaikona in 1997 – was a dozen tries adrift of Jack’s tally, so it is difficult to imagine that, over 100 years later, that Jack Harrison’s record will ever be surpassed, particularly as he had the great Billy Batten and Herbert Gilbert alongside him in the centres.
Although Jack played subsequently in the Wartime Emergency League, he was cut down at Oppy Wood in France in May 1917 whilst serving with the East Yorkshire Regiment. He had already had the Military Cross bestowed for a previous action in France and his bravery at Oppy Wood brought the honour, posthumously, of the Victoria Cross.
However, the situation worsened considerably during the summer of 1915. As many players enlisted for the Armed Forces, the withdrawal of teams from the unofficial Emergency War League commenced with Keighley, Widnes and Warrington failing to make the start in September 1915, although St Helens Recreation came into the mix.
Many teams right from the start were dependent on guest players to constitute their teams. Players stationed at a convenient location near a Northern Union Club were usually available to turn out. Fixtures were arranged so that travelling was cut to a minimum and Hull FC were usually called upon to make any journeys across the Pennines early in the season, although in reality, they were few in number.
Very early in that first Wartime season a Derby match with Rovers drew a crowd of 10,000, but another encounter in April 1916 attracted only 2,000, such was the drain on spectator resource for the war effort.
Attendances became ever more pitiful, so it was fortuitous that the players were only playing for expenses. On 26th February 1916, a combined Hull-Rovers XIII played an ANZAC XIII on the Boulevard in aid of war charities and Hull then played Batley in the afternoon, with Billy Batten playing in both games!
Three Months later, Billy also organised a Testimonial for Steve Darmody, Hull’s Australian Loose Forward who had lost a Foot whilst fighting in France. The match, between an East Riding XIII and a West Riding XIII raised £220 for Darmody.
In 1916-17, the number of teams remained constant, but the use of guest players became farcical as L.G.Evans of Bradford played full-back for Hull in the first half of a fixture with Wakefield Trinity and then for Trinity in the second half!
On 20th October 1917, Billy Batten turned out for Dewsbury despite Hull refusing him permission to do so. The following week, Hull played Dewsbury and Batten was named in both teams. He played for Dewsbury but was back in Hull’s colours the following week. That season saw the Emergency competition played 12-a-side and that obtained for the rest of the war.
Hull KR failed to reach the starting gate in 1918-19, although after Armistice in November, they re-formed and two Friendly matches were arranged on Christmas Day and Boxing Day 1918 prior to the recommencement of the County Leagues in January 1919.
There were always people in authority who saw fit to condemn the continued playing of Football during the war, and the Northern Union in particular, came under fire when the Officer class made their feelings known that players and spectators should have been fighting the war rather than playing Football.
Despite all the difficulties that Hull faced in continuing to operate during both World Wars, bearing in mind the logistics in travelling from the East Coast, the club never once failed to fulfil a fixture. The success which they had on the field in the years immediately following WW1 can be seen as justification for flying the flag during those dark times.
Hull fulfilled some 105 Fixtures during the three and a half seasons of Wartime Football and 98 of them were in the Emergency War League.
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