Wigan Album

Seeing this picture of Jack Hilton and the next one of Jack Cunliffe reminds me of the 1960s when I was at Wigan Grammar School with their sons John Hilton and Jeff Cunliffe. Both were great rugby players in the school Rugby Union team. My point however is that from memory they and lots of others included me wanted to carry on playing Rugby League as many of us had played at primary scholl and was our passion. The school of course forbade any playing of RL. Now it was bad enough in those days when the RU forbade anybody playing RL from darkening the doors of RU club, but lets not forget this was a WIGAN school run in those days by Wigan Corporation education Dept. I do think it was a disgrace that many place in Lancashire and Yorkshire where RL was the dominant code did not stand up to the RU bully boys. I gave RU a go for a few years but never really enjoyed playing it as much - too much standing around in line outs and rolling round at the bottom of rucks. One good thing about WGS though was they did offer Hockey and I played that in the Senior years and went on to play at University and Club level, but I still feel annoyed that I and many others were not allowed to play our first love RL at secondary school in those days. sory about rant but it still rankles.

Didn't Jack Hilton have an hole in one of his thighs ? IIRC he always had it strapped up due to this. Apparently, he was shot during WW2 when he was in action in North Africa. Could catch pigeons my old Dad used to say.

The man on the extreme left is my Dad Tot Walsh, he coached Wigan A team

Similar story Carolean,when I started at WGS I had an almost new cherry &white strip which I wore at our first games period at Prospect. Subsequently I never got on with games master Frank Balmer and eventually turned to football.This was 1952 and I am still a season ticket holder at the DW stadium.It 's your post that made me think about it.I never realised that the school had such a policy.

It’s a small world. I’ve played rugby union with both John Hilton and Jeff Cunliffe.
And...Frank Balmer was our sports teacher at John Rigby.
I’ve never seen any of them for 40 years!

I remember Frank Balmer well from my days at John Rigby. I actually thought he was a decent bloke, hard but fair, although he did have something against RL [even though I heard he'd played for St Helens!] Carolean is spot on in his comments about some Wigan secondary schools' attitudes to RL. The Christian Brothers [pardon my language!] at John Rigby wouldn't hear of the school playing League, and although I enjoyed my time there playing Union, I was always a League player at heart. Frank Balmer spent ages with me trying to 'correct' my passing style. As a centre, I was supposed to swing my arms at full stretch when passing. Often I'd 'flick' the ball in a pass because it was quicker, but Frank Balmer told me it was a terrible habit I'd picked up from my time at primary school [St Benedict's, Hindley] playing League! He passed away several years ago, and to my mind he was one of the good ones at John Rigby. R.I.P., sir.