BY an odd coincidence, the name of famous rugby league player Harold Wagstaff has been thrust into the limelight not once but twice in recent weeks.
Harold was a Holmfirth lad, and the plaque recently mounted on the wall of a building at the ‘Pump Hole’ at the foot of Dunford Road is the only one of the dozen on the Holmfirth Blue Plaque Trail to be dedicated to an individual.
The player, who lived at Underbank, first made a name for himself aged 14, playing for a team known as the Pump Hole Rangers. They met at the site of the present blue plaque.
He went on to gain international fame, captaining Great Britain 21 times and leading the so-called Team Of All Talents at Fartown in the 1914/15 season.
Known at the ‘Prince of Centres’, he’s pictured on this page with all four grand trophies and in the 1912/13 season group picture, rather clumsily montaged (for today’s standards) from individual pictures.
He led Fartown to 16 cup and league successes and scored more than 200 first-class tries before his retirement in 1925.
Born in 1891, he was the son of Andrew and Hannah Wagstaff. At this point rises a dilemma unresolved at least by Holmfirth Civic Society members, who erected the plaques.
Harold had a cousin Harry, born a year earlier, to Sam and Laura Wagstaff, who apparently bore a striking resemblance to Harold.
They too lived in Underbank.
It appears that Harry might have been a renowned member of Holmfirth Cricket Club, rather than Harold, who must surely have been rather busy winning trophies for Fartown at the time.
But multi-talented sportsmen were not uncommon in those days, and it may well have been Harold, not Harry, who batted, fielded and bowled as well as tackled and tried.
Coincidentally, the latest edition of the Huddersfield Local History Society’s journal carried a 10-page biography of Harold Wagstaff, written by rugby league aficionado and society member David Thorpe.
Harold died in 1939.
