I would have said Billy and Bluey were a huge success as matchday mascots - young uns loved em.

The era of Fax moving to the Shay was fantastic and the club can only dream of getting back to those days. Regular crowds of 4-6,000 and some fantastic rugby. A personal highlight was Daryl Cardiss' full length try against Leeds and the introduction into games of a young, fired up Andy Hobson. Sadly the demise set in too quickly with the stadium at that time probably more of a hindrance than anything.

Wood was at Fax 1996-2001 so yes on all counts.We survived a CVA in 1999.I liked Billy/Bluey but you could see they were quite intimidating to little kids.

The problem was 4-6K crowds were pretty poor in comparison to what we used to get at Thrum Hall. Hell we used to get 2K sometimes to watch the reserves. Like in 98 the home play off game with St Helens only attracted about 4K people. SL on those crowds without a big money backer is simply not sustainable.

Very true.Used to love the A team games at the Hall.A lot of fans never made the transistion to the shay sadly and many that did binned it after 2003.

I used to love the second team games at Thrum Hall and like you say we used to get 2,000 watching . We lost 1,000 or more fans straight away when we moved to the Shay as some just never moved down plus another 1,000 shortly after as the place just never had the same atmosphere as Thrum Hall. I was laughing the other day with Dick Fairbank about some of the things that happened during matches he said the players loved it .
How Bentley would share spectators sandwiches whilst waiting for conversions and you could have a chat with the players during the match . Dicks favourite was when the opposition player vaulted the boardings to scatter the crowd who were making fun of him . I never feel the same excitment entering the Shay as I used to going to Thrummers as it had a soul but it`s what we have so you have to make the best of it .

I remember the vaulting incident on a Sunday afternoon well but not too sure on the team, Salford perhaps?

Good times for the A team, even the freezing Friday nights couldn't keep people away.
For the opposition there were many a young star to be in their ranks.

I remember a certain baby faced Sean Long, unknown at the time and before he became the player he did, one night he was lining up a difficult conversion and I was doing a take on the Bob Hope line and shouting to him "Don't forget the wind is from the west so aim to the east", the pitch slopes to the downhill so stand on your toes etc.

It made no difference as he just calmly slotted it between the sticks and gave me a wave.

Dick remembered it as Salford but I wasn`t sure ,at Thrum Hall there were scores of funny moments with players and spectaters and fans winding up the opposition was easy too .Another player who scattered the crowd one time by pretending to jump after them was a guy with long curly hair . The scratching shed started to sing " Oh my baby , my curly headed baby "it was a lone voice for starters but grew to quite a chorus before he snapped .

Pretty sure it was the Salford hooker (Gormley?), who got sin binned, and then decided to join the crowd rather than take his place in the dug out.

Another one was what I call the "What a waste of money game" with that chant that sprang up against Leeds.

Every Fax fan in the ground joined in, even an old pensioner stood next to me got that involved his false teeth fell out.



Leeds had head and feed at the scrum near the bottom corner end and I decided to add "Especially Bobby Goulding" to the line in a loud booming voice.

Well Bobby heard me and did not like it one bit, being a fiery character and on seeing who it was gave the classic medusa stare and had to restrain himself from coming over the fence much to my relief.

Aye now you mention it, it was Gormley, thinking about it whatever the on field incident was I think he was an innocent party and that's what wound him up.

As much as I have no time for Big Nige and what he has done to the game it wasn't him who came up with the Bluesox name. I interviewed him as part of my dissertation back in 97 or so and asked him where the name originated. Turns out the Fax directors at the time were trying to come up with a name, but all the obvious ones wouldn't do (Hawks, Harriers, etc). Halifax Bombers was favoured, but with Super League planning on dominating Europe (yeah right), it was felt the name wouldn't go down to well in certain countries. One director jokingly brought up the Bluesox name and low and behold it got voted in 4:3. The rest is history.

As for Thrum Hall, I used to sell programs/steward and occasional do the scoreboard. On one occasion we were so short staffed I had to sell programs and do the scoreboard. Trouble is all the late arrivals spotted me going into the scoreboard and followed me in to get a program. I'm trying to keep score of the match while people kept coming up the bloody ladder to buy programs. Then getting the buggers out was a nightmare as the view was so good up there! Happy days

I did a similar interview with him in 1996 and he told me that it wouldn't be fair for him to take all the credit for such a great marketable name. I highlighted the likes of Wolves, Rhinos, Bulls etc and the opportunities that they presented with merchandising etc but he claimed that Sox was a far better name than any of them as it wasn't as restricted!? He also spouted on about how he was building bridges with the local amateur clubs, he didn't like it when I asked him when the club was going to pay all outstanding fees to these clubs for players they had signed.