I played for the Essex Eels for a number of years, from the junior level up to the first team, I'm not surprised it received such an accolade as one of the worst expansion teams in history. It was a story of one scouse man with a dream to bring the beautiful sport of Rugby League to the masses, to the hotbed of sporting talent that is..Essex. We use to play out of Basildon Stadium and recorded one win in NL3 against Carlisle which was subsequently taken away from us because the opposition team disbanded later on that season. Just to sum up some of the best memories of the Essex Eels I'll rattle off some of the teams finest moments...

-Getting beat 134-0 against Hertfordshire (I played in this game and am told it was two points off the world record score)

- Spiraling debts from the clubs credit card, even though there was not a penny coming in.

- The signing of three international players, one dutch, one American and one Kiwi..promised the world and given a three bedroom semi in Collier Row. We had a very multicultural team including a Kazakhstani Cambridge graduate, a semi racist South African and a whole host of local people dragged in to play including me and a number of my friends who played against semi professional northerners at the age of 15 and 16. Needless to say we took some almighty beatings, but had a very good time doing it!

I have a lot more things I can say about the team and i definately have contacts if you were seriously going to write about it, a lot of funny memories to be shared.

Get in touch

AceVentura

what a disgraceful little mag RL world is. top 10 worst expansion teams. much better read would be top 22 pioneering teams that broke away From the old ways to set up an exciting attacking game but then sat on their backsides for 100 years telling each other how great they were while the rest of the sporting world overtook them.

I played for Brentwood Elvers, the youth team from Essex Eels which is still running but has low support. Which is causing me to go to a different club because of lack of players for matches. The club could have potential but yawnion dominates the area

Quite right, would not touch it with a bargepole. A patheitic lazy piece of journalism.

You would have thought Rugby League World would talk the game up as opposed to slagging it off.

I meant to say why does Carlisle not feature in the 10 failures ?
Oh of course they are from the North.

Prince of Denmark...the man you are referring to is Leeroy Brown...yes he was the baddest man in the whole dam town, that town being Romford, so you had to be pretty bad to earn such a title! A trained professional mixed martial artist with a flair for violence..he was the rose amongst are bed of weeds.. the guy no one on the opposition wanted to with which was very nessersary the whippings we took. Sadly, Leeroy didnt travel well and only played in a handful of home games, rumour has it he was on tag!

You really couldnt write this could you