A MAJOR project to celebrate the proud heritage of rugby league has been launched in Huddersfield – thanks to a £100,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Entitled ‘Huddersfield Rugby League: A Lasting Legacy’, the project will celebrate and record the history and heritage of professional and amateur rugby league in Huddersfield, while commemorating some impending and significant anniversaries.
The project is the brainchild of Giants Community Development Manager Laura Hanson and was officially launched this week by Giants chairman Ken Davy and Kirklees council leader Mehboob Khan.
Work on the project got under way this week and will run until November 2014, which is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Huddersfield club.
Giants chairman Davy believes these are exciting times.
He said: “This is a wonderful opportunity for all the community to celebrate the game of rugby league.
“I can’t wait to see how this project unfolds and how it looks when it’s completed in late 2014.
“Our game and our town has been crying out for something like this and it’s fantastic that it is finally happening.”
The main focus of the project will be on the centenary of the club’s Team of all Talents – one of only three teams to win all four available trophies in the same season (1914-15). It will also mark the anniversary of the start of World War I and its impact on the people of Huddersfield.
The project will also help raise the profile of Huddersfield as the birthplace of rugby league – at the George Hotel in 1895 – and of the Rugby League Heritage Centre, one of the UK’s major national sporting museums, which is housed at the hotel.
Local people, including schoolchildren and university students, will be trained in archiving, oral history and digitisation techniques, then participate in the collection and storing of memorabilia and memories.
Displays of memorabilia will include a three-month exhibition in 2013 at Huddersfield’s prestigious Tolson Museum and an on-line museum, accessed via the Huddersfield Giants website.
Project publications will include local trails, a local history scheme of work for Primary Schools, collectors’ cards and two books.
The first will be about rugby league information unearthed by the project and, filling a gap in the market, the other will focus on Huddersfield in World War I.
A trail of the museum will also be included as part of the schools’ scheme and also distributed in leaflet form to local tourist information outlets.
