THE DARRYL VAN DE VELDE COLUMN (From Warrington Guardian)

THE DARRYL VAN DE VELDE COLUMN

IT was great to see Dave Wright again over the past week.

Of course, he played in Warrington's last Challenge Cup winning side of 1974 and I got chance to meet most of the other players for the first time when they had a reunion at the weekend.

I had a coke with them all on Sunday night in Bobby Wanbon's Red Lion pub in Stockton Heath and spent some time reminiscing.

I played against Wrighty down under. I was at the beginning of my career in Australia and he was near to the end of his. Nowadays he is doing live television commentaries and doing a good job too for ABC, which is like the BBC over here.

It was a great idea having the reunion because people go in so many different ways and it is good to catch up. Bringing Wrighty 12,000 miles for the event was great and I know he was really pleased because he has not seen many of the players since he left here 25 years ago.

This year's Challenge Cup final was a predictable result but I don't think the 52-16 scoreline indicated the progress of the game nor the commitment put in by London, who competed well for 50 minutes and the game was in the balance until then.

There was a big turning point when London were 10-0 ahead. Shaun Edwards, back in his heyday, probably would have scored after Steele Retchless cut through and turned the ball inside for the scrum half to finish off. But the former Great Britain No.7 was caught short of the line and London missed the chance of going 16-0 up. But in the end Leeds' class showed and they are one of the top sides in the country.

Three days later Leeds were in action again at St. Helens and were defeated 62-18 by Super League's unbeaten leaders.

All teams have had to back-up like this over the years so I don't think the League were being unfair just on Leeds. But I don't think it is healthy or fair in general. We've got to relocate the fixtures a little bit surely! If all teams are playing in the same environment it's not too bad but one team should not be punished with a congested fixture list for winning a place in the Challenge Cup final. It's very hard to back-up from the highs and lows of the final. Leeds were on a high and celebrated while London would have been flat and had to try and get back into it again when they backed-up on Wednesday at Halifax.

Leeds will be Warrington's next opponents at home, which is the Sky television game on May 16. And we have new contractors on board preparing the pitch for the game.

Cliff Evans are the contractors and their man Mel Jones will be tending to the pitch from now on - it had just got a little bit too much for Ockher who is still involved with the club though. I have been told that Mel had an opportunity to go to Tottenham Hotspur to tend to the White Hart Lane turf but his wife didn't want to leave the area. Now he's with us and doing a super job. He's very committed to getting a very good pitch for us, he's always on the tractors. We've got a programme in place which will bring the pitch up to being one of the better pitches in the competition. I place a lot of emphasis on a pitch. For instance, when the weather is hot you need to keep your grass fluffy so that it cushions the blows. We spend millions of pounds on playing staff and the pitch they play on has to be spot on.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.