Castleford 3 - 0 Hunslet (abandoned after 37 minutes)
Saturday 2nd September 1939
The 1930s had seen the first period of success for the club.
Two Yorkshire League titles were won, along with the Rugby League Challenge Cup in 1935. The decade ended with an appearance in the 1939 Championship Final against Salford at Maine Road, Manchester, where a crowd of 69,504 – then a record for a rugby league match in England – saw Castleford suffer a narrow 8-6 defeat. However, just four months later this period of success for the club was brought to an abrupt end by the outbreak of the Second World War.
When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939 the new rugby league season was only two games old. And just one day before the Prime Minister’s announcement Castleford played Hunslet at home.
The match was played under unusual circumstances as the country was already preparing for war. Train services were already being disrupted as evacuation plans were being introduced, resulting in the referee plus one player from each side failing to reach the ground in time for kick off. One of the appointed touch judges took up the whistle and just as the teams kicked off heavy rain began to fall. However, the rain did nothing to dampen some aggressive early play as Castleford’s McManus and Hunslet’s Bennett were both dismissed by the stand-in referee following a major altercation. As the torrential rain continued, pools of water began to form on the pitch making open rugby impossible. The only try came after half an hour when Arthur Atkinson scored for Castleford. Jim Croston did his best to get the conversion attempt off the ground but couldn’t manage to clear the crossbar. A few minutes later the referee called the players together and made the decision to abandon the match. Just before the players left the field – wading through knee-high water to get back to the dressing rooms – the crowd gave the loudest cheer of the day as a Spitfire flew over the ground.
Extreme weather and war imminent
Although the storm abated for a while, a second storm struck later that evening causing flooding on Bridge Street and in the Wheldale area of the town. The forked lightning was even more spectacular as air raid precautions, including the black out, were officially imposed for the first time that evening. The impact on people’s lives was immediate. Within 24 hours of war being declared, air raid sirens sounded in Castleford for the first time, although it turned out to be a false alarm. Within the first week, the landlord of the George and Dragon public house on Bridge Street was fined £5 for breaching blackout regulations and, sadly, the first two local fatalities of the war occurred when two cars collided in the blackout.
In the uncertainty of those first few weeks of war the Government, fearful of air raids, imposed a ban on all sports where large crowds might gather, and the rugby league season was abandoned. The recently arrived New Zealand touring team had played only one match of their tour before it was cut short. A match against Dewsbury was quickly arranged to help to finance their trip back home and they left shortly after the game on 9th September.
However, within a few weeks the Government realised an immediate attack was unlikely and lifted their ban, and the first matches of a regional War Emergency League were played on Saturday, 30th September 1939. The War Emergency League continued throughout the rest of the war, although Castleford withdrew at the end of the 1941/42 season. The club had struggled to field a team due to players’ wartime commitments, and wartime fuel shortages made travelling to away games difficult. Buses were no longer available and it was not feasible to travel to many away games by train without players taking time off from important war work. It wasn’t until the start of the 1944/45 season, with the war entering its final stages, that Castleford re-entered the War Emergency League. Exactly five years after the abandoned match against Hunslet, on 2nd September 1944, the club resumed its participation in the league with a 20-5 home victory over Dewsbury.
