Unlucky XIII

The Windsor wedding at least, one trusts, signalled the end of some tiresome weeks for the royal family. So trying, in fact, that it would certainly not have noticed a final pesky shaft before the dissolution of Parliament which had a group of northern MPs bleating about royalty’s apparent preference for rugby union over its cousins of the league code. (A jolly good game rugby league — tough, honest, regularly thrilling — but too often insecurely fretful of its status; even the mildest censure down the years has meant reams of green-ink death threats from north of the Trent.) The Labour MP for Wakefield and secretary of the parliamentary rugby league club, David Hinchliffe, considers it ‘shameful’ that in the past five years there has been no royal family attendance at a league match compared with 35 for the rival rugby union. He said that the last senior royal at a 13-a-side game was when Prince Andrew handed over the pot at the 1995 World Cup final.

I had imagined fraternal rapprochement had been secured between the codes, helped by rugby league’s recent change of season from Eddie Waring’s muddy ee-bah-goom winters to Sky Sports’ sunny summers as well as, now that union is also professional, matey reversal of one-way players’ traffic, south-to-north, which so blighted relations all down the last century. I was reminded this week of those often poignant journeys north when they buried Trevor Foster last week. One of rugby’s all-time monarchs, a proud Trevor not only met the Queen a few times, but her parents as well: when captain of Bradford Northern at Wembley in 1948, the first Challenge Cup final graced by royalty. I last sat with the grand old oval legend two springtimes ago when his beloved Bradford (now called the Bulls, wouldn’t you know) played in the 2003 final at Cardiff.