By Various
May 14 2005

More reminiscences from some of the many thousands of fans that were there at Twickenham on April 16th 2005, for the magnificent Powergen Cup winning achievement from the Leeds Tykes. Emotional? You betcha!

My greatest memory was the unmatched support for the Tykes, chants of "Yorkshire" and "marchin on together" seemed to echo from every corner. I couldn't believe it was over the Goggsy kicked it out, even on the bus back to Leeds I expected a phone call calling us back to play another 10 minutes of injury time.

One suggestion when we win it next year, stronger glue on the shirt numbers, when Snyman intercepted I thought for a second that it was no.1 as opposed the no.14 who had the ball but Leeds self belief was so complete that I haven’t any doubts that Shelley would have sprinted the 70 yards himself without breaking a sweat.

I felt that there was total commitment from everyone involved on the day; players, coaching staff and fans that never wavered from the task at hand and that showed on the day and has continued in the subsequent games.

The summer is going to be very long indeed!

Simon Mulholland

Initial feelings were ‘my God, there’s a lot of Bath fans’.  We seemed to be swimming upstream in a river of them.  But of course, everyone was good natured.  Then there was the bar, where, still amidst a sea of Bath fans, I got chatting to some Bedford supporters.  Who were then joined by some from Plymouth .  By now I was wondering where all the Tykes fans were hiding. 

But at last I made my way to my seat, and there they were.  Middle tier, east stand, jammed full with flat-capped, flag waving, yellow-topped Tykes.  Except the three seats to my left which were oddly occupied by a Bath gentleman and his daughters.  He complimented me on such a long journey to see my team get hammered, wondered if we could keep within fourteen points of them, and pointed out their 100% record. That’s one of my favourite memories.  Well, more the cordial reminders of his earlier comments at the end.  I know, I shouldn’t gloat.

I think the best memory of all though was staring at the clock during the last five minutes.  You see, I hadn’t realised that they stopped it during the stops in play.  Therefore I was reckoning on there being a further five minutes injury time, and you know how often we’ve been punished during this period before.  So when the whistle went on 80 minutes it was an incredible sudden release of pressure.  A mixture of excitement, relief, joy, adrenalin, disbelief and exhaustion all hit me at once.  And it kept going for the whole of the following week…

*baldric*

Meat 'Ed and Tukey (Tukey's in yellow BTW!!!)

I went to Twickenham with my wife, Marge, and an old friend 'Meat'ed'. Meat'ed is a devoted Bath fan and the weeks leading up to the match I was receiving text messages, answer phone messages at work and such like telling me how good Bath were, how they had nver lost at Twickers etc etc. Meat'ed was that confident of a Bath win he even agreed to sit in the same area of the ground as Marge and I and pay for his own ticket, as in his eyes, 'one Bath fan is worth twenty Tykes fans'.

Poor Meat 'Ed!! There there!!

As the first photo shows he was full of bravado (and lager) before the kick off and anyone who were sat near us could vouch for that. However, as the match went on and it was looking like Bath were going to loose he quietened down and as the second photo shows at full time he was a changed man...

Priceless

Tukey

---

(Page heading photo courtesy Phil Clark)