The main purpose of our decision to spend a few days up north – our Yorkshire Break 2010 – was to watch a game of Rugby League for the first time.
When I first met my wife she had very little interest in sports at all, but as time went on I introduced her to the strategic warfare element of American Football and she eventually became as big a fan of that sport as me. So much so, in fact, that with the conclusion of the season in February of each year there was a gap in her sporting life that she wanted to fill. I could understand this. After some random viewing of various sports on TV we started to take an interest in Rugby League. It had elements of American Football in it – move a certain distance in a certain number of attempts – and it was fast-paced and nicely brutal.
Now, Rugby League is not a big sport in the south of England so we were limited to what we could watch on TV. We decided we’d pick a team each to follow and that would be that, so my wife chose Bradford Bulls and I chose Leeds Rhinos. I can’t remember why. For a year or so those were the teams we cheered on.
In 2010 we decided that we’d like to go and see a game of Rugby League properly. We checked the fixtures list and tried to find a game that would feature both teams playing each other at a time of the year that worked for us, but we ran into the issue of not really liking where available hotels were related to the grounds, or what else there was to do around them. After much dithering and researching, we ended up opting to just watch one of those teams – Bradford – playing away at Wakefield. We liked the look and location of a hotel on the outskirts of the city, and we liked Wakefield’s position relative to other things in Yorkshire that would make exploring this part of the country easier.
The photographs below are a small set of those I took while we stood on the terraces at Wakefield Belle Vue Stadium on a Friday evening in May, 2010 to watch Bradford Bulls pretty much demolish Wakefield Trinity. At the bottom of this post I’ll explain what happened as a result of travelling to Yorkshire to watch this game.
So, Bradford beat Wakefield, and you’d think that we’d be happy about this – my wife especially – but in fact we’d already had a couple of days based in the city and exploring, and we’d already had some nice encounters with the locals, and we’d really enjoyed the atmosphere at the stadium. It was fantastic to see so many kids involved on the field before the game and during half time, cheerleading or dancing, and to see such a friendly, family feel on terraces with both sets of fans mingling and with youngsters more-or-less left to roam around without worry.
“You know,” I told my wife. “I think I’m going to change allegiance and start to support Wakefield.”
“Yeah, I was actually thinking the same thing,” she replied.
And so we did. And for the next few years we made the effort to return to Wakefield, both to use it as a base for visiting interesting sights in and around Yorkshire, and to watch them play some Rugby League. It was several years before we saw them win, though. We’re still Wakefield Trinity fans now, but it’s been a while since we last went to watch them play. We’ll have to rectify that at some point.