From back when they played at Leeds Road it was some extra money as not many volunteered for Rl, anyway I found the fans more approachable, some not but not as bad as the football lot. Iam a football fan first and foremost though but the banter amongst RL fans is second to none!

My 1st was either Workington or Whitehaven in 87/88 (?) - i went because the previous home game my brother and my mate went cos there was nothing else to do on a sunday so for a laugh they decided to give the Rugby a go - they enjoyed it and told me what a good time they had and so i decided to find out for myself the next home game !!

Needless to say i was hooked - cant remember the score but we won a close game and the crowd was about 600 if i remember rightly.
After that we were introduced to Keith Burhouse who was the groundsman at the time by ex Fartowner Tony Johnson and for the next 2 seasons we worked on the ground - sweeping terraces,ball boy-ing, programme selling, turnstile operating and even scoreboard operating - then Bailey came and it went bad but we didnt stop going and are still here some 20 years later !!

Wash your mouth out.

dont worry - we'll turn her eventually

I thought that was Agent Bricks job...

er.....no comment

Less said about that the better!

Isn't it funny how selective some peoples memory can be.

John Bailey "came" in 1983, Keith Burhouse joined him as a volunteer helper on the grounds etc in 1984. In 1988 John Bailey gave away the club debt free to the Murphy/Shuttleworth/Collins consortium.

John Bailey came in 1983 as one of 8 Directors. They all left to look after their own businesses in the next 3 years and he soldiered on to keep the club alive (I will admit barely) until someone else could take over. He could have wound up the club but didn't. If it was not for John Bailey we could be in a position where we had no club to follow.

Please get facts straight before getting the digs in.

I wasnt arguing about what he did for the club Stuart i was meaning from a personal point of view as he decided that these 3 young kids who came up on a sunday morning to help make sure the games could go ahead etc and who's 'payment' was free entry into the game had to leave the ground when our work was done and queue up and pay like everyone else - needless to say we were a bit 'off' after that with Mr Bailey and decided that we would pay in future and he can get someone else in to do the crappy little jobs !!.
One game we actually missed the 1st 15 minutes becasue we were shovelling gravel into a hole at the side of the main stand to make it look nice fo rsome RFL inspectors - he still expected us to go out and pay then !

1987 v rochdale @ fartown

we were bored of watching the rock fc on sundays so decided we'd go to watch fartown, so we did and haven't looked back since