It really could have happened!

Having been a supporter of Fartown and the Giants for over 60 years, I thought it appropriate to say a few “thank yous” as the club approaches what should be its best day since winning the Championship final at Odsal in 1962.

At the end of a disastrous 1987-88 season, then chairman John Bailey had truly had enough.

The nucleus of a good team had been sold off to keep the club going with Brian Blacker, Paul Dixon, Wilf George and Gary Senior being moved on.

The chairman had examined his lease for the 14-acre Fartown site and found that so long as “organised sport” was played at the complex he could keep his lease going.

He very nearly dissolved the professional team, but some of the club’s most loyal helpers begged him to rethink and eventually Mr Bailey offered to “give the club away” to anyone who would take it on, with him carrying on at The Pavilion to clear the historical club debt.

Mick Murphy, a much travelled former RL star made contact from his home in Aberdeen saying that he would give it a go provided others would join him.

Local builder Jim Collins, who has sadly since died, and myself responded. After endless negotiations with the Council, the banks and the RFL, we three took on the club in October 1988.

Nigel Stephenson was persuaded to come out of retirement and join us as player-coach, but it took a massive effort to put games on, with a large number of volunteers cleaning up the ground.

After a stuttering start the club won its first game for a year against Hunslet at Elland Road – we had come a long way in a couple of months when under the old set-up the team had been humiliated at Castleford losing 94-12.

So a big thank you to Mick Murphy for your lead which Jim and I were pleased to follow.

A couple of years later, financial pressures caused me to return to the terrace side and along came journalist Dave Parker and local estate agent Joe Bramley to inject more funds.

Eventually a trophy was won – the third division championship – but in doing so events caused the club to lose their lease at Fartown.

A new Consortium came in led by Bob Scott, the late Les Coulter, Margaret Caldwell and current Giants directors Mel Green and Alan Bamber – among others.

Bob Scott took us to play at Leeds Road, while doing a great job in securing funds which allowed the club to become shareholders in the new McAlpine Stadium.

So another big thank you to Bob and his board for moving the club forward again. And during their tenure approaches were made to Ken Davy and his then company DBS to become shirt sponsors – and the rest is history with Ken eventually becoming chairman and chief shareholder.

It is hard to put into a few words how much the club and its loyal and dedicated fans owe to this man and his highly supportive wife Jennifer. So this time it has to be in capital letters – ‘THANK YOU’.

And I feel there should be a few more accolades – one to the various regimes of coaching staff from Nigel Stephenson to Paul Anderson, whose team have clearly done an amazing job this year and, secondly, a massive thank you to the huge army of volunteers who have supported the club in many ways off the field.