Bryn Powell, Danny Kirmond, Wayne McHugh,

When Jamie Stokes left Rovers at the end of 2004, Featherstone signed Dewsbury winger Bryn Powell as a replacement. Capped by Wales, Bryn was a proven finisher, and finished second in the try charts in the 2005 season with 11, but at the end of that disappointing season he was one of a number of players who paid the price for Rovers’ relegation and was released. However, six years later in 2011, Daryl Powell brought him back to Post Office Road for a second season. Despite scoring 23 tries in 25 games he was not retained for the following year. Bryn’s opposite wingman back in 2004 was Wakefield–bred Matty Wray (34 tries in 72 games) who played for three years before emigrating to Australia. His replacement was a youngster from Sharlston who went on to make his mark in the game.

Danny Kirmond started out as a winger at Featherstone Rovers and after an impressive start claimed a regular first team spot with his forceful running and safe defence. After topping the try charts in 2007 and scoring 41 tries in 73 games he signed for Huddersfield Giants. Danny has been playing at Super League level ever since, and is currently the captain of Wakefield Trinity.

With Rovers in the third tier of professional rugby league they took a chance on Dewsbury winger Wayne McHugh. Despite his off-field problems, Wayne proved to be a consistent try scorer both as winger and centre at Featherstone and in three years played 75 games and notched 58 tries. Fast and with the knack of being in the right place at the right time, Wayne was the club’s top try scorer in 2006.

Doncaster stalwart Dean Colton played one year for Rovers in 2007 before heading back to the Dons, and later that same season Rovers signed Nigerian Ade Adebisi who scored a couple of spectacular tries in a short stay. Former Castleford and Wakefield winger Waine Pryce gave two years good service to Featherstone, scoring 24 tries in 47 appearances, before finishing his career at Hunslet and York. In the 2009 season he shared wing duties at Featherstone with Scottish international Jon Steel, who Rovers signed from Hull KR.  Jon scored 25 tries in 39 games and represented his country at the 2008 World Cup in Australia.

In Rovers’ league championship winning season of 2010, former Hull full-back Tommy Saxton had been converted into a winger and played right wing, and up and coming youngster Zak Hardaker (19 games 28 tries) played on the left wing.

Jamie Stokes

Jamie Stokes had actually made his debut in 1996 but managed just 17 games in his first three seasons as he was brought along slowly by David Ward and Steve Sims. His first match was off the bench against Whitehaven in July 1996 and he made an immediate impact, grabbing two tries, and showing his trademark speed off the mark and eye for the line that would bring him so many more. He served his apprenticeship in a very good Academy and reserve side that included the likes of Jamie Rooney, Steve Dooler, Stuart Dickens, and Neil Lowe. It wasn’t until 1999 that he finally got an extended run in the side coached by Peter Roe, and Jamie repaid the faith shown in him with quality try scoring, good hands, and an appetite for the hard work of bringing the ball away from acting half-back.

He was a permanent fixture in the first team for the next six seasons, rarely absent through injury, displaying a high level of consistency. His major asset though of course was his pace and he was difficult to catch over any distance. Despite having an array of centre partners, including Martin Law, Richard Newlove, Chris Spurr, Brendon O’Meara, and Fred Zitter, his try tally always remained impressively high. He was the club’s top try scorer in 2000, 2001 and 2003and his season by season totals went 18, 23, 21, 10, 22 and 16. Among numerous long distance tries and hatricks, one outstanding effort against Doncaster in 2003 stands out for me when he scooped the ball up from acting half-back inside his own 25 and then mesmerised the whole Doncaster team with a mazy run before accelerating clear to score.

When he reached 100 tries in his career during the 2003 season, he was at the time the third fastest player ever to reach that number, as it took him just 167 games. Only Martin Pearson and Paul Newlove and then recently Andy Kain have done it faster. Troubled for the first time in his career by a shoulder injury during 2004, this turned out to be his final season and after that he joined Batley. He played a further four seasons at Mount Pleasant before retiring. His Featherstone Rovers career total stood at 117 tries from 197 games, seventh on our all-time list.

Testament to Jamie’s consistency and durability would be a quick look at the number of players who filled the opposite wing during the same 1999 to 2004 time period when he played. Matt Bramald, Ian Thompson, Adrian Flynn, James Ford and Matt Wray all made their mark.

Eddie Rombo

When Rovers were demoted in 1995, we immediately lost a number of players, including popular wingman Ikram Butt to the London Broncos. To fill that gap we turned to Nairobi, via Dewsbury.

In our final season in the top flight with Owen Simpson out injured, Rovers had signed young French star Freddie Banquet from Carcassonne. He joined fellow countryman Danny Divet at the club. Fred had a very good season at Featherstone, scoring 15 tries in 20 games, but left to join Paris St.Germain, and indeed scored the first ever super league try in 1996. His replacement came from even further afield.

Eddie Rombo had made a name for himself playing rugby union in his home country Kenya, and he came over to the UK in 1990 to study at Leeds University and had trials at Headingley. He did well enough to be signed on by Leeds, but played only nine first team games before moving to Dewsbury. He had four productive seasons at Dewsbury where he was a regular try-scorer. Rovers signed him in time for the centenary season in 1995/96. Playing on the opposite wing to Owen Simpson, this was arguably the fastest pair of wingers the club ever had. Underused in that centenary season, Rombo scored some spectacular long range tries in the first summer season of 1996.

Towards the end of the 1997 season, Rombo left Featherstone and had a short spell with Morley rugby union before heading home to Kenya. He had scored 26 tries in 55 games. Coupled with the retirement of Owen Simpson, Rovers had some holes to plug. In came local youngsters Darren Hughes and Karl Pratt. Both players had played junior rugby for Leeds, but when Darren moved to Featherstone in 1993 he started to get the occasional first team chance on the wing and at centre. In 1996 and 1997 he was a first team regular, and picked up a decent haul of tries too, but a knee injury saw him drift out of the game and his career finished prematurely.

Karl Pratt started out as a stand-off, but coach Steve Sims moved him out to the wing for the 1998, and what a masterstroke that proved as Karl had a prolific season, grabbing 25 tries which helped outsiders Rovers to go all the way to the Grand Final and within a whisker of super league. It was of course Karl’s infamous disallowed try that denied us that night and, headhunted by Leeds, it proved to be his last match for Featherstone. He appeared on the wing for Great Britain in 2002 whilst at Leeds, and later transformed himself into a hooker at Bradford before a shoulder injury finished his career prematurely too.

Owen Simpson

Rovers had signed both centre Terry Manning and prop Gary Rose from Keighley in 1989/90 and so when they went back to Lawkholme Lane the following season for winger Owen Simpson the hope was that he would provide the same level of service to Featherstone as Terry and Gary had done. 

Two things that became very clear from the outset were firstly that Owen Simpson had pace to burn and secondly that he would enjoy playing outside Paul Newlove very much indeed. He started as he meant to carry on, scoring a try on his debut in November 1990 against Castleford and never looked back. That first year Owen ended with 12 tries from 23 games, and he went onto enjoy a long unbroken run in the first team, free from injury and free-scoring. He played in 113 of Featherstone’s next 118 games over three seasons.  

         

With Ikram Butt and Terry Manning, all muscle and bustle, operating together down the right flank, Owen teamed up with Paul Newlove down the left and regularly ripped sides apart. Newlove’s pace and power combined with Simpson’s finishing skills proved a lethal partnership in the top flight. In 1993 in the Second Division though, they were virtually unstoppable. That amazing Championship winning year was undoubtedly their peak season when both players broke Cyril Woolford’s long-standing tries in a season record. Simpson ended with 34, still the club record for a winger and Newlove 48 for an astonishing total of 82 tries between them. It was a great time for Rovers fans and coincided with the popularity of John Hill’s video commentaries to Terry Mullaney’s ground-breaking “Tries of the Season” videos. On the 1992/93 video, time and time again John’s inimitable voice rose to fever pitch as Newlove made yet another break, to be finished in style by Simpson. Wonderful memories.

At the end of that record-breaking season Newlove moved on to Bradford and Simpson had a new centre partner in kiwi Iva Ropati. Back in the First Division, Owen managed 14 tries from 28 games. The following year though he was hampered by a serious knee injury for the first time in his career and managed only five games, but fought back to play most of the first summer season of 1996 before retiring. His career total stands alongside any of our most prolific wingmen, 98 tries in 158 games, just short of his century. In retrospect, Owen’s career represented the end of an era. He was an old-fashioned finisher, fast and elusive, whose contribution to the team consisted almost entirely of scoring tries and whose defence or capability under the high ball was never really questioned. From that time on, the game changed and wingers started to take on a new role.

Ikram Butt

In the summer of 1990, Peter Fox, always on the look-out for new talent, plucked a young three-quarter from the obscurity of Leeds A team and turned him into a very useful player. He had unearthed another cult hero for Featherstone fans, a stockily-built, hard-working winger who was an instant hit with the fans.

After four years at Headingley with just a single first team opportunity, Ikram Butt had to move to Featherstone Rovers to become if not the first, then one of the very few Asian descent players in professional rugby. With a try on his debut against Bramley it was clear Ikram and rugby league were made for each other. He blended the right attitude with great upper body strength, always looking for work at a time when wingers running from acting halfback had just started to become fashionable. Never the fastest player, his style was more for shrugging off tacklers than sprinting past them, and his high levels of fitness gave him a long run in the first team. He was with the club for for five seasons and in that time appeared in 168 games out of the 176 games Rovers played, and scored 66 tries. His link up with centre partner Terry Manning provided the perfect bustling hard-working counterfoil to the prolific Paul Newlove/Owen Simpson combination down the other flank. What a tremendous three-quarter line that was.

Ikram’s best try return came in his second season when, despite his 21 tries, Rovers were relegated. The following year he won a Second Division Championship medal and played in the Premiership final at Old Trafford. Undoubtedly the high point of Butt’s career came in 1995, when he was selected for the full England team against Wales. Much was made in the media of the fact that he was the first Muslim to play international rugby for England, but Ikram just got on with the job. He also came close to appearing in the Cup final at Wembley, but Rovers were beaten in the semi-final by Ikram’s old club Leeds.

At the outbreak of Super League, Ikram signed for the London Broncos. He failed to settle down south and moved onto Huddersfield, then Hunslet, before finally retiring in 1998. Once he finished playing, he became heavily involved in community rugby league, being a role model for many youngsters in Yorkshire and promoting rugby league in the county’s Asian communities. He then founded the British Asian Rugby Association, which won him widespread praise, including from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the House of Commons. He wrote a very interesting autobiography and still works promoting the game.

Richard Marsh, David Barends, Calvin Hopkins, Mark Knapper

With the retirement of Ken Kellett in 1983, a new generation of Rovers wingmen came through. However, it was a time with quite a few changes in the coaching staff, and so there was a similarly rapid turnover of players.One of the longest serving wingmen of the period was Richard Marsh, who played 123 games from 1981 to 1988. Richard was a quiet achiever, rarely grabbing the headlines, but he served the side well and finished as the club’s top try scorer in 1984 after taking over Ken Kellett’s left wing spot. That same year on the opposite wing to Richard was David Barends. David had come over to England from South Africa where the Apartheid system ensured his rugby talents would never be appreciated. He was a popular character at Post Office Road, although he was coming to the end of a career that had included, oddly enough for a South African, two Great Britain caps. After Barends came local youngster Neil Woolford, who arrived with the best of credentials, the son of 50’s legend Cyril. The weight of expectation was always on Neil’s shoulders but he made his own way, playing 45 games. 

One of my favourite players from the 80’s was Calvin Hopkins. Built more like a second-rower, Calvin was just the kind of wholehearted, uncompromising competitor the fans loved. He played 70 games from 1984 to 1987, topping the try charts in 1985. No respecter of reputations, he was never happier than getting stuck into his opposition number. This excellent photo by Eric Lorriman shows Calvin in full gladiatorial mode about to enter the arena. Many other players were tried out on the wing but failed to make a lasting impact although you may remember names such as Joe Bardgett, Danny Beach, David Jones and Dave Sykes.

There were two particular players who had the briefest of careers but nevertheless stuck in my memory. One was Andy Bannister. Small but nippy, Andy was brought into the first team for the last four games of the 1988 promotion season and went to the Premiership final at Old Trafford where he scored a superb individual try in our amazing comeback against Oldham. He seemed set for a decent career but never played again.

The other was Mark Knapper, who made his debut in 1989 and played for long enough to write his name into the record books for most goals in a match. His 13 goals against Keighley in 1989 came in only his third ever game. He also won a special place in our hearts for kicking a last minute touchline conversion to beat Castleford in the Yorkshire Cup semi-final that same year. He unfortunately missed the final through injury and his place went to Barry Drummond. Knapper’s career spanned just 15 appearances but he’ll always be remembered for that kick.