Hello everyone,

As you can probably tell I live in Essex and am a Rugby League fan. I was reading through the December issue of Rugby League World and was interested to see that the Essex Eels had come in the Top Ten of the worst expansion clubs in history. I'm interested in writing a piece about the club.

I knew of the Essex Eels club but I'm very interested into the ins & outs of the club like: how they were formed, who formed them, were the players come from (e.g locals or travelled from London) and playing records of the club.

The club competed in NL3 as it was so I was wondering if anyone had any information about the club, its players, officials etc.

Much appreciated.

My memory of Essex Eels is that it was the longest trip to Asda EVER!

We (Warrington Wizards) set off early for the long drive down there. The players got changed and strapped and were warming up on the pitch only to then be told that they didn't have a team. Got changed, went to Asda for some booze and drank their way back to Warrington!

I think Asda were happy about our visit though!

Thanks Milly

What ground was it?

I played for the Essex Eels for a number of years, from the junior level up to the first team, I'm not surprised it received such an accolade as one of the worst expansion teams in history. It was a story of one scouse man with a dream to bring the beautiful sport of Rugby League to the masses, to the hotbed of sporting talent that is..Essex. We use to play out of Basildon Stadium and recorded one win in NL3 against Carlisle which was subsequently taken away from us because the opposition team disbanded later on that season. Just to sum up some of the best memories of the Essex Eels I'll rattle off some of the teams finest moments...

-Getting beat 134-0 against Hertfordshire (I played in this game and am told it was two points off the world record score)

- Spiraling debts from the clubs credit card, even though there was not a penny coming in.

- The signing of three international players, one dutch, one American and one Kiwi..promised the world and given a three bedroom semi in Collier Row. We had a very multicultural team including a Kazakhstani Cambridge graduate, a semi racist South African and a whole host of local people dragged in to play including me and a number of my friends who played against semi professional northerners at the age of 15 and 16. Needless to say we took some almighty beatings, but had a very good time doing it!

I have a lot more things I can say about the team and i definately have contacts if you were seriously going to write about it, a lot of funny memories to be shared.

Get in touch

AceVentura