An inside take on the feel at York ahead of their first ever Super League fixture – at home to the champions!
York Knights’ Liam Harris with Hull KR’s Oliver Gildart outside York Minster with the Betfred Super League trophy.
THERE’S a sense of hush and awe when the three Super League players first enter York Minster.
For Knights skipper Liam Harris and Hull KR centre Oliver Gildart it’s their first time. York’s likeable Aussie back-rower Jesse Dee lives just around the corner and has entered the hallowed space before.
Harris and Gildart both pull out their phones and snap away. It’s not my first time here but the scale and grandeur still have the capacity to make you feel rather small and humble.
Rosalind Kelly, a member of the Minster’s marketing team, sums it up perfectly with a soundbite that could be recycled for the upcoming World Club Challenge. She ushers the players in through a side door and simply says: “When two worlds collide.”
The lads are here today with the Betfred Super League trophy to publicise the opening game of the season between the two clubs.
Harris and Dee pose beneath the Heart of Yorkshire design embedded in the stained glass of the Great West Window. Legend says couples who kiss beneath it stay together forever. This pair keep a respectful distance.
All three stars are relaxed, engaging and seem genuinely excited about the new season. All the training, all the prep, all the photo opportunities and now it’s finally time to get down to business.
Dee is great company. He chats about how much he loves the city and the joy of full-time training replacing the hours of downtime players, especially Aussies, had to handle when they were a Championship outfit.
His girlfriend, a teacher, is waiting for her work visa before joining him from Down Under.
They marry in October on the day England take on PNG in the World Cup in Wollongong. He’s a lad from that patch and a St George Illawarra junior and jokes he may go to the game instead.
Harris is focussed and if it’s possible to be intense and laid back at the same time, he somehow manages it. He’s a calming presence, something you would expect from a player who leads his club and speaks softly but with authority about the challenges ahead for his newly-promoted team.
”There’s a lot of people who have worked so hard on the field and off the field to get where we are now so we are excited to get out there and deliver,” he says.
Harris set up in business as a mortgage and property advisor, something that he will turn to full-time once he retires. But first the business in hand.
He adds: “It’s great we can spread the word of league within York and everyone is slowly picking up on that.
”I think eventually when we put our best foot forward and we give the city a team to be proud of then it will only grow. But it’s up to us to make sure this is not a token gesture.”
I stroll around the city before heading to the Minster and find myself in perhaps its most famous street, The Shambles.
This is particularly appropriate given I nearly missed my train from London after a frenzied sprint when I went to the wrong station (long story). One frantic, sidestepping, gasping half-mile run and I make it by 30 seconds – a shambles of a man collapsing into seat D69.
The narrow lane, so beloved of tourists and anyone in TV or cinema who wants the quintessential shot of quaint, higgledy-piggledy old England, is busy with gawkers buying Harry Potter tatt.
The adjacent Shambles Market has stalls offering such delights as ‘the hottest chilli’s in the world’. That’s their apostrophe, not mine. Maybe you throw around random punctuation when you’re suffering the after-effects of their advertised bowel-bothering Carolina reaper.
Next stall is a man selling strange plaques and signs at a place called Nutty’s Emporium. They are supposed to look vintage but just look a bit naff. I spot Everton, Derby County, Hull City. There’s one of a magpie sitting on a toilet and an Arsenal sign so far north sends me mildly nutty.
No sign of anything York City but look carefully and the distinctive wasp-like markings of the Knights are represented. One sign says simply ‘The Knights est 2002’, the other ‘Come on you Knights!’. There are no prices and I’d be nutty to ask.
Several passers-by look slightly bemused when Harris and Gildart later pose alongside the Super League trophy with the glorious Minster in the background. It’s a fine shot.
Jon Wilkin doesn’t like the trophy. He says it should be bigger – or smaller like cricket’s Ashes urn. Jon Wilkin likes to say stuff like that.
Today it’s super shiny though, and there is the occasional worried glance when somebody shoots past on an e-bike. Wouldn’t be a good look if it was swiped but I’d bet on the three players catching the thief.
I chat to Gildart inside, our conversation shattered at one point by the sound of the Minster’s organ going full Deep Purple.
He’s posed at Hull Minster before a derby but this feels really special.
We reflect on his journey as a player. From Wigan, where he won a title and World Club Challenge, to relative disappointment in the NRL and now back at the top of his game after last season’s treble.
After that time at Wests Tigers, Roosters and Redcliffe Dolphins and only 10 first team games does he feel he has anything to prove when Rovers take on Brisbane Broncos?
“No mate,” he says. “I think the game is bigger than me individually. This is a massive opportunity and spectacle. It does the city of Hull proud and I want to do my teammates proud.”
His dad Ian won two World Club Challenges at Wigan. He has just the one after Wigan beat Cronulla Sharks 22-6 in 2017. He laughs and says that’s not been mentioned back home.
After third round Challenge Cup victory over an amateur side, the contrast of going up against the NRL champions could not be greater.
He says: ”Yeah. We played Lock Lane. They’d all just finished a day on the tools and the centre I played against was probably a tradesman. And then you go from that to facing Kotoni Staggs in a couple of weeks. I can’t wait.”
But first the opening game of the season here in York in front of a sell-out crowd.
As I leave those players behind and stroll back to the station I pop into the House of Trembling Madness for a pint. It’s a pub in case you’re worried about my sanity.
It seems fitting. York’s stadium will be full of trembling and madness for that opener and when Rovers lock horns with the Broncos at Hull FC’s stadium we can expect even more.
I suspect there will be madness and trembling in my own house too for both those nights as the season starts to truly unfold.
Seven games of Super League followed by the wonderful Reece Walsh circus when Broncos come to town and then Vegas.
Two worlds collided in the Minster. Many worlds are about to collide in rugby league.