From International Athletics to Rugby League

1st July 2024

When I attended the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow earlier this year – “Thrilling Action and a New World Record” (4th March 2024) – I was given a copy of the October 2023 edition of Backtrack, the excellent magazine of the British Athletics Supporters Club. The publication had an article by Colin Allan on Arthur Rowe, Britain’s first great shot-putter, who won gold medals at both the Empire and Commonwealth Games and the European Championships of 1958. Allan noted that Rowe broke the British record 13 times and won 5 consecutive Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) Championships between 1957 and 1961. Then, in July 1962, he signed for Oldham RLFC for a reported fee of £1,500.

With the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris now almost upon us, I have been thinking about other attempts by elite performers in track and field to cross over into professional rugby league. It is a story of mixed success.

Arthur Rowe was not one of the successes, unfortunately. At 6 feet 2 inches and 17 stones, he might have been expected to find a role as a prop-forward but, instead, he was selected on the wing for a total of 4 “A” team matches. He did not graduate to the Oldham first team, however, and it was not long before he reverted back to athletics, though he was then limited to the professional competitions of the Highland Games and strongman competitions.

Although Rowe’s switch of allegiance was a major surprise for the athletics world of the early 1960s, this had already been dwarfed in shock value by the events of a decade earlier. In July 1953, the sprinter McDonald Bailey signed for Leigh for a reported fee of £1,000 with further payments to follow depending on appearances.

Although born in Williamsville, Trinidad and Tobago, Bailey had represented Great Britain in the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games, winning a bronze medal in the latter in Helsinki. He had won the sprint double 7 times at the AAA Championships and, in Belgrade in 1951, he had run 10.2 seconds for the 100 metres, thereby equalling the world record set by Jesse Owens 15 years earlier. (The record would be equalled by six other sprinters, but not overhauled until 1956).

His acquisition by Leigh was a sensation. In modern terms, it was if Usain Bolt had signed for Hull Kingston Rovers.

The Leigh club of the early 1950s was respected in the Northern Rugby League, but it was not one of the elite: the previous season’s Lancashire Cup success had been its first trophy for over 30 years. However, there was no doubt that, if nothing else, it had pulled off a major public relations coup. Bailey’s debut for Leigh – and, as it turned out, his only first-team appearance – was against local rivals Wigan in December 1953, five months after he had signed for the club. This was a specially arranged match to celebrate the switching on of the floodlights at Leigh’s ground, when the reported attendance was just under 15,000.

In his match report for the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury, the rugby league journalist Alfred Drewry began by noting the “17 photographers lining the touchline”. He went on to count the number of passes Bailey received on the wing – 9 in the full 80 minutes, of which he dropped 2, though he did score a try – but also commented that “his defence was feeble in the extreme”. Drewry’s overall conclusion was that “all in all, one was left wondering what all the fuss was about”. Bailey announced his retirement from rugby league shortly afterwards.

If Arthur Rowe and McDonald Bailey did not make the grade in their new sport, are there examples of international athletes who did? There are indeed.

Peter Henderson ran for New Zealand in the 1950 British Empire Games in Auckland, when he reached the final of the 100 yards and then won a bronze medal in the 4 x 110 yards relay. His success in rugby league – having joined Huddersfield in September 1950 – was not exactly a surprise, however, as he had played rugby union for the All Blacks in 7 international matches before focusing on his sprinting talents. Henderson stayed with Huddersfield for 7 seasons during which time he won both Yorkshire Cup and Challenge Cup winners medals (in the 1952-53 season) and racked up a total of 214 tries as a wing three-quarter.

In many respects. Peter Henderson’s sporting career was not dissimilar to that of the South African, Adriaan “Attie” van Heerden, the main difference being that the latter’s athletics peak year of 1920 – when he was the national champion in both the 120 yards and 440 yards hurdles and then a participant at the Olympic Games in Antwerp – preceded his two caps as a Springbok rugby union international. Van Heerden then played for Wigan between 1923-27, scoring over 100 tries in this period. Undoubtedly the most famous of these was in the 1924 Challenge Cup final, played in Rochdale, when he ran around a mounted policeman in the in-goal area who was attempting to keep the huge crowd at bay. (The final of this competition was not played at Wembley until 1929).

It is fair to say that Peter Henderson and Attie van Heerden were already top rank rugby players (albeit not in the league code) who took time out to pursue their athletics careers for a relatively short period before taking up the professional version of the oval ball game. Perhaps a more clear-cut example of the successful transition from top-flight sprinter-to-wing three-quarter was the Welshman, Berwyn Jones, who was signed by Wakefield Trinity in 1964 after playing in a couple of trial matches under the ironic pseudonym of “A Walker”. Jones had also played rugby union, but for his club – Rhymney RFC in South Wales – rather than at a higher level.

Jones had competed in the 1962 European Championships in Belgrade (for Great Britain) and the same year’s British and Commonwealth Games in Perth (for Wales) winning a bronze medal at both in the respective 4 x 100 metres and 4 x 110 yards relay races. His career in rugby league was with Wakefield and then Bradford Northern and (briefly) St Helens over the course of 5 seasons and he was another prolific try-scorer. He also represented Great Britain on three occasions in international matches against France and, in 1966, he was selected for the GB tour of Australasia – the highest accolade for a British player – during which he played in 15 matches and scored 24 tries.

It is a fascinating quirk that, when Berwyn Jones lined up for the sprint relay finals of the two athletics championships of 1962, one of his teammates/rivals was Alf Meakin from Swinton. Perhaps they compared notes on the attractions of alternative sporting careers. Like Jones, Meakin was a double medal winner, taking bronze in the 4 x 100 metres in Belgrade and then gold (for England) in the 4 x 110 yards in Perth.

Having completed in the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Meakin had trials with Leeds in the autumn of that year, but was not offered a contract after one first-team and two “A” team matches. (His only previous rugby experience had been in a handful of matches in the union code with the RAF). However, he had more success with Blackpool Borough, for whom he scored 12 tries in the 1965-66 season before taking up a post as a sprint coach with Preston North End FC.

For those athletes named so far, the decision to seek a career in rugby league would have been taken in the knowledge that there was no going back to life as an amateur athlete. Colin Allan’s article makes it clear that the AAA’s regulations regarding being paid to play rugby were effectively no less stringent than those of the Rugby Football Union. (In New Zealand, the RFU’s lead on professionalism was thoroughly endorsed by the NZRU: Peter Henderson’s ban from playing or coaching rugby union lasted for 38 years).

Against this, therefore, it was heartening to read in Allan’s article of the letter sent to Arthur Rowe by Jack Crump, the British Team Manager, wishing him every success in his professional sporting career: an honourable gesture by the senior administrator. Alf Meakin also received similar correspondence.

The Bradford club – by now in its modern guise as the Bradford Bulls – had success with another former British athlete, when it signed Abi Ekoku in 1997 from the Halifax Blue Sox, the player having initially joined the London Broncos in 1993. Like Arthur Rowe, his specialism was in the field events; he was selected by England for both the shot and discus in the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, coming sixth in the former event.

Unlike Rowe, Ekoku did secure a regular place as a wing or centre three-quarter in his new sport. Just as Peter Henderson had done almost 40 years earlier, he played in rugby league’s showcase club fixture – the Challenge Cup final at Wembley – for the Bulls against St Helens in 1997, though it was a loser’s medal that he was awarded at the end of the match. Following his retirement from playing, Ekoku remained in the sport, at various times being the CEO of the Keighley Cougars and Bradford Bulls and then the Great Britain team manager.

For the most recent attempt to move into a professional rugby league career from the disciplines of the sprint lane, we turn to Dwain Chambers, who was taken on (temporarily) by the Castleford Tigers club in March 2008. Chambers had returned to competitive athletics in 2006 following a two-year drug ban, but his peak years as a 100m sprinter were already behind him; his personal best had been the 9.97 seconds recorded when winning a bronze medal at the 1999 World Championships in Seville and he had followed this up with a 4th place in the same event’s final in the Sydney Olympic Games a year later.

By the time of Chambers’ rugby sojourn, we were well into the Super League era with that division’s first-team squads all being full-time professionals. We had also entered the period in which the on and off-field experiences of professional sportsmen were subject to the closest media scrutiny. For Chambers’ first (and, again, only) game for Castleford (an “A” team match against York), the Guardian’s rugby league correspondent – the highly respected Andy Wilson – provided a blow-by-blow account of each time Chambers touched the ball (7 in total in the 40 minutes he was on the field) or attempted a tackle (3 successful, 4 missed).

Or perhaps nothing had changed: Wilson was echoing the approach taken by Alfred Drewry when reporting on McDonald Bailey in the Leigh vs Wigan match over half a century earlier.

I recall that the media interest in the Castleford/Chambers connection extended to the BBC’s national evening news, but – apart, again, from the short-term publicity angle – the outcome was not a success. Castleford did not pursue their interest, though the press reports suggest that they had been impressed with Chambers’ effort and commitment.

Dwain Chambers was aged 30 when he took part in his Castleford trial match; in the earlier generations, Arthur Rowe had been 26 and McDonald Bailey 32 when they dipped their toes into the rugby league waters. Without having had any previous exposure to rugby in some form, the challenges they were attempting were surely close to impossible. It was – and is – a demanding sport, in which overall speed and fitness are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions to attain success. There are a range of other skills to be mastered in handling, tackling, positional play and – not least – learning to absorb the physical assaults (lawful and unlawful) on the body. By contrast, Berwyn Jones, Peter Henderson and “Attie” van Heerden had had prior rugby experience, in the Henderson and van Heerden cases at the highest level.

I have always had an interest – and an admiration – for those elite sportsmen and sportswomen who attempt to reach the top in other sports, though I suspect that the days of the elite athletes trying their hand in professional rugby are long gone. Nonetheless, when I watch the Olympic Games athletics on the television next month, I might keep half an eye open for that potential wing three-quarter.