Playing Highlight: Like many contributors to this feature, I have many, - playing for England Schoolboys must be up there and being part of the Yorkshire Colts team in 1980 which won the inaugural Colts County Championship both stick in my mind as early rugby memories.

Before I share the highlights of my time at York, I should at this point out or perhaps offer an apology to all my former captains, scrum halves and inside centres that had to put up with my “ranting” over the years - you know who you are. We did go through some great times though didn’t we? I would add further that none of my memories would have happened without the quality of the players around me during this era.

My highlights at York are numerous and could fill pages.

Early memories include winning the Yorkshire Shield in 1981 with many of the Colt’s team from 2 years earlier in squad. This was a great experience.
As was winning the York RI Floodlit Trophy several times. Each one had its own challenge for me particularly, especially when York played. Dave Clegg the RI coach at the time used to bring out an odd shape ball to handicap my kicking. Brings a smile to my face now, didn’t at the time.
Having kicking duals with Mark Schumacher (York RI) and Billy Hardy (Pocklington) was always good competitive fun. Honours were mostly even I seem to remember.
Playing against Middlesbrough in October 1994 when I passed 3000 points in a York shirt was a proud achievement.
However, the 93/94 season in the captaincy of Mark Davies was probably the pinnacle of my time playing for York. The previous season we had qualified to play in the Pilkington Cup by beating Sandal. We beat Kendal in the first round proper the following season and then went to Coventry who played many divisions (4) above us at the time. Although getting beaten, we gave a good account of ourselves, it was a fantastic experience, the support that followed us that day was “awesome”. Had I had my kicking boots on from the start the result may have been different (sorry guys). It was also the season we got promoted to North 1 having beaten Bridlington in an all or nothing game on the final day of season.

Which Opposition Team Do You Remember Most:
Playing against Sandal away was very hard and York RI in the early days were always tough encounters. Later, Bridlington was always tough with honours being pretty even. We did win the main event though as referred to above

Most Amusing/Off-field Playing Highlight:
There were many but the accolade must go to Tony Law. Tony played with us in the early Colt’s team resurrected by Tony Williams. What was remarkably about Tony was that he has a prosthetic hand, so every time he played, he had to remove it. He went on to play at all levels in the club. Anyway, may years ago we used to have the occasional strip show at the club. We had just progressed from Colts to Senior rugby so could attend. At one such show the strippers were well into their act and had started rubbing oil over each other. At this point, they asked the audience if anyone would like to come up and give them a hand? Out of nowhere, Tony’s prosthesis flew through the air and landed on the stage next to them. Tony had detached his hand and thrown it in from 2 rows back. They were mortified and audience were in stiches. What happened next will remain in the annals of history.