College Grove, Wakefield RFC, 1935-2004

Wakefield and Coventry went into the final match of the 2003/04 National League One season knowing whoever lost would effectively go out of business. With Wakefield’s loss, College Grove hosted rugby union for the last time.

Famed England internationals of the 1980s, Mike Harrison and Bryan Barley, arguably the club’s finest products, were inconsolable in the clubhouse bar after a 15-11 defeat to Coventry confirmed the game was up. Wakefield and Coventry had gone into the final match of the 2003/04 National League One season knowing that whoever lost would effectively go out of business and one of rugby's great traditional clubs would be no more. Coventry had just moved into the Butts Park Arena and wouldn’t have been able to finance the new ground had they been relegated; no wonder chairman Keith Fairbrother was shuffling uneasily in one of the bright yellow tip-up seats in the ground’s main stand, which was erected in 1984 in place of the smaller original 220-seat structure. 

Floodlights were installed not long after that, but they only shone brightly in a metaphorical sense every once in a while – notably in the John Player Cup run of 1976/76 when Moseley and Northampton came to town and interest was so high temporary seating was installed to accommodate the 4,000 or so spectators who crammed inside the ground. Two other Cup runs at the turn of professionalism, also galvanised passing interest in the former West Riding wool town where rugby league was the sport of choice. Wakefield were within a whisker of beating mighty Bath in 1996 but Richie Butland scored for the visitors from a quickly-taken penalty – given against the Grovers for time-wasting – to win the match 16-12.

Bath’s West Country rivals Gloucester made the same journey the following year, one step closer to Twickenham, at the quarter-final stage of the Pilkington Cup, and were similarly relieved to come away with a 25-21 win. Since moving to the ground from its previous home in Outwood in 1935, Wakefield RFC played just over 1,000 matches there. Barnsley were Wakefield’s first opponents with the Grovers winning 14-8 in front of 1,500 spectators that produced gate receipts of £25. If those present in the Bath game thought their luck rotten then, it was nothing compared to the heartbreak that followed the defeat to Coventry in April 2004. A cracking blindside try in the sixth minute from visiting scrum-half Shaun Perry and some determined defending in the latter stages as the home side, in the face of a fierce onslaught by the home side led by crazed player-coach Mick Watson, ensured it was Coventry who survived not Wakefield.

With unsecured creditors’ loans of around £640,000, a trading loss of £105,000 for the season, dwindling crowds and a 60% cut in central funding on the horizon, the one-time John Player Cup semi-finalists were no longer seen as a viable concern. The shareholders of the club decided that they could not continue to throw good money after bad upon the Grovers losing their National One status for the first time since leagues began in 1987. Plans to sell the club's ‘league place’ to a consortium who wanted to move the club to Oxford, were blocked by the RFU, and mergers with Sale FC, Halifax and cross-city rivals Sandal, a thriving National 3 (North) club, came to nothing and the club was eventually wound up.

Now, it would be hard to tell that great rugby union clubs like Bath and Gloucester and some of the leading Welsh sides ever set foot on College Grove, which also hosted a Divisional fixture between the North and London in November 1995. The rugby pitch was subsequently used by local football teams before Wakefield FC moved to the ground for the start of the 2006/7 season, making improvements to the perimeter fencing, external fencing and installing a turnstile block. The grass pitch has been replaced by a further bright blue AstroTurf pitch, and was used by the Chinese Olympic hockey team in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games. Where rucks and mauls once took place, bullying of a more civilised kind is commonplace in this leafy, some would say posh, suburb of Wakefield.