Famous and Forgotten

19th April 2024

The latest book by the eminent rugby league historian Robert Gate – Famous and Forgotten: Albert Goldthorpe and Archie Rigg – covers the parallel careers of two of the earliest of the game’s great players. Goldthorpe played for Hunslet between 1888-1910 and Rigg for Halifax and (briefly) Bradford between 1891-1908. Both therefore began their playing days before the “Great Split” of 1895 – when a group of northern clubs seceded from the Rugby Football Union over the issue of “broken time payments” (to compensate players for the lost wages when playing for their clubs) to form the Northern Rugby Football Union, later the Northern Rugby League – and became key participants in the establishment of the new code at the turn of the century and into the Edwardian era.

Gate catalogues the similarities between the two players in terms of their records, skills, durability, sportsmanship, successes and disappointments. And yet – his main theme – their legacies are significantly different: Goldthorpe was inducted into Rugby League’s official “Hall of Fame” in 2015 and has a “legendary status as an icon of rugby league”; Rigg is all but unknown.

It is always a pleasure to read of Albert Goldthorpe’s achievements in his sport and in life. (I still have the shivers in recollecting an absolutely appalling portrayal of him by Dennis Waterman in an Australian television drama made in the 1980s). His Yorkshire Cup success with Hunslet in 1905 was merely a precursor to the 1907-08 season, when, at the age of 36, he led the side to their “All Four Cups” triumph. Hunslet won the Challenge Cup, Championship, Yorkshire Cup and Yorkshire League, the first time that this had been achieved in a single campaign.

Quite apart from his 700-plus appearances for Hunslet during his 22 years in the game and the record league goals and points tallies that he had accumulated by the time of his retirement, it is Goldthorpe’s stewardship during the All Four Cups season that has ensured his enduring recognition. When the final whistle sounded at the conclusion of Hunslet’s 12-2 win over Oldham in the replayed Championship final of 1908, his rightful place as a totemic figure in the game’s history was guaranteed.

Gate makes a strong case for Archie Rigg’s inclusion in the RL Hall of Fame – rather than just in the Halifax club’s corresponding pantheon, where he is currently placed. He captained Yorkshire in the first 5 seasons of the Northern Union and led Halifax to success in the 1903 Challenge Cup final against Salford at Headingley.

However, I do wonder – if Archie Rigg were to be considered for promotion – to which other candidates of that era this might also apply. To give one example, John Willie Higson was not only a member of Hunslet’s “Terrible Six” pack of forwards in 1907-08 but, after transferring to Huddersfield, was also a member of the “Team of All Talents” that itself won all four cups in 1914-15. He was the only player to be part of two such sides. (Swinton – in 1927-28 – were the only other side to accomplish the feat before the county leagues were abolished in 1970). Moreover – unlike both Goldthorpe and Rigg – Higson was an international player, winning 5 caps for either Great Britain or England (under the Northern Union banner) in 1908-09.

It is at this point that I must confess to a more personal interest in one of the subjects of Robert Gates’ book: that is, in finding out whether there was any family connection to Archie Rigg. The surname is not common – to say the least – amongst the front-line rugby league players of any era, my attempt to rectify this having terminated when I played my final match for the Chapel Allerton Primary School in Leeds nearly 60 years ago.

An hour’s research on Ancestry has provided the answer, I think. My known paternal line goes back four generations to the birth of George Rigg in North Yorkshire in 1802 to “Mary Rigg of Baldersby and an unknown father” (according to the parish register).

By contrast, Archie Rigg was of proven Halifax stock – still Yorkshire, of course, but sufficiently distant from the rural north to be fairly conclusive for this exercise. He was born James Archer Rigg in the town in 1872, his parents being John Rigg – a joiner by trade – and Sarah Birtwhistle. John had been born in about 1836 and John’s father, Samuel, in about 1800, the latter a cordwainer in Halifax. Whilst it is always possible that there was some earlier overlap in the branches of a single family tree, of course, I have to concede that this is unlikely.

I have been here before. In An Ordinary Spectator Returns, I reported on the cricketer Keith Rigg, who played in 8 test matches for Australia in the 1930s and made a century against South Africa in 1931. I concluded there that his great grandparents were William and Louisa Rigg (née Clark), who had married in Newington, Surrey, in 1837 and subsequently migrated to Australia, where they settled in Victoria. Surrey is even more of a stretch from Baldersby than Halifax. The search continues.

In the meantime, there is much to ponder about Famous and Forgotten – and in a general sense, rather than simply in sporting terms. What is it that determines whether the heroes of today will take a prominent place in the history books of tomorrow?