On Feb 9th 1918 Northern played an away fixture versus Brighouse Rangers - a match that should never have been played. The Brighouse pitch was covered in 8" of snow with howling blizzards going on at the same time. Brighouse didn't want to play but Northern's directors insisted and the game went ahead in front of 9 (NINE) spectators.

The match was abandoned after 35 minutes but the result stood. Northern won 13-11.

I guess it was a combination of things. Certainly the Bradford side's performances had dropped off; a very good, but ageing side, with too many coming up to retirement at the same time and players not being replaced with newcomers of a similar standard.

When you add in the fact that the economy was improving after wartime shortages and people had more choices about where to spend their leisure time (TV was becoming popular, and more affordable for the working classes,for instance) it's perhaps not that surprising that 'traditional' pastimes fell out of favour to some extent.

that season

Also if ever there was a player that would have benefitted from full time superleague training it would have been Neil Summers

Prepare to be extremely surprised. I copied that team line-up from the T&A’s match report the following day.

like when he made his debut for Leeds against us at headingley -oh that was funny