Talking of Steve Tinker, when I was a teenager it always amazed me just how many quite well known ex players there were dotted around Wakefield, especially in the seventies.

When I first came to Wakefield it seemed every other man over the age of 30 had played for Trinity. Although football in 1976 had not yet become millionaires row it was unlikely that you’d find a former England centre forward running a newsagents on Dewsbury road.

At first this didn’t impress me at all and made the game seem small time compared to football. Although I’d always played and watched RL football was my passion and where the glamour was.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that I really embraced RL. And one of the big attractions was how accessible it all was. Quite famous players past and present running pubs, bookies and shops, totally engrained in the communities they represented. Hell I’m sounding like Redcat now!

All the same that seems lost now. May just be society in general but I don’t come across many ex players working locally in mundane jobs these days. I suppose some of that’s down to the clubs tragic dependency on overseas players up until recently but all the same I do wonder where ex players end up these days. Maybe it’s longer careers or better education.

All the same I can’t see Tom Johnstone working in a garage in Wrenthoroe in ten years time. Really is a lost era of the local team with local lads. Don’t know if it’s sad as such but it does represent a very different era.

I guess part of that is the amount of money earned while playing. You can invest it in more behind the scenes media or property type roles rather than being out front.
It would be interesting to see a Where Are They Now thing on players but I'm also happy they have a normal private life too.

Like you I knew of a few players from 80s in normal life but none now.

The one that amazed me and still does was Mal Reilly. In the 1980's I used to take my lunchtime drink at the Queen's Hotel in Pontefract. Often I'd see him there sat in the corner with a sandwich and a briefcase. He was having his lunch having spent the morning doing the stocktaking at the hotel. That was his job, a relatively easy one, for John Smith I think.

What's amazing about it is that despite being the long-serving Castleford Coach he'd been a player of great fame most notably in Australia. Yet despite all this the game and the coaching job he was in didn't give him enough money or security to be full time in the game. This may have changed when he took Leeds over and certainly Newcastle but in 1985 he still needed a day job.

By 1985 most first division footballers who played more than a few seasons could expect to be able to live comfortably after leaving the game, they would need a job but only if they didn't stay in the game. Whilst the top players or Reilly equivalents were already becoming wealthy men in their own right. Some stayed in the game others wnt into business but I doubt any were managers of a top club but still had a day job!

Just shows how dramatically RL has changed and how much money there is in the game now compared to then. CC may one day have to get a job outside the game if things don't pan out but whilst ever he's a working coach I don't think he'll ever have to work part-time as an Avon lady.

Harold Poynton was my newsagent on Heeley Road, Kettlethorpe for many years before he moved to Dewsbury Road...... Smashing chap.
It all boils down to the fact that your average semi-professional rugby league player was just an ordinary, working class, bloke next door with an ordinary working class job; usually in this area a miner, welder , mechanic or such like. The professional classes tended to lean towards the other oval ball game. Many ex-players tended to take up jobs in the licensing trade,pub landlords, pub managers and the like. Neil Fox had a string of bookies for a period.

Wasn't there a short tenure Trinity Chairman who used his company to do a major unnecessary refurb of the East Stand back in the day. I have a name but I'll leave that out.

That'll be Shawfold then, I think ??. We DID deliver there until the back end of last year but don't now and the boss is called Stuart and IIRC he has 3 younger lads working for him ?

I grew up on Ashleigh Avenue (directly opposite what became Harold's newsagents on Dewsbury Road) and it was my brother who first told me that Harold had taken over the shop and neither of us could quite believe that a former Trinity Superstar was now running a shop at the bottom of our street

I remember the game at Fulham went down on one of the coaches a great day out. Better than the trip to Brentford many years later when we got tonked!

There was a short tenure Trinity Vice Chairman who's company refurbished the East Stand in lieu of Trinity shares. I wouldn't say it was unnecessary as the floor, benches and seats were mostly wooden at the time and probably close to failing safety standards. His company went into administration not many months after and he and his sidekick left the club.

Duncan Developments I think they were called