T'Other Side: Hunslet

    

Head Coach: Dean Muir

Dean Muir is in his first year as head coach of Hunslet, replacing Alan Kilshaw who has now moved to take charge of Swinton Lions. We know very little about him except that he was coach of West Bowling ARL and guided them to promotion into the National Conference League Premier division at the end of last season. He has also been involved in the coaching team at Keighley Cougars.

We have no record of him ever having played as a professional.

 

Captain: Billy Gaylor

 

Billy Gaylor is one of a massive eighteen new signings for Hunslet in 2024. He made his first grade début for South Wales Scorpions in 2016 whilst on dual registration from Halifax but he never made a first grade appearance for Fax. In 2017 he joined Coventry Bears. He then moved to Keighley Cougars in 2019 and has been there until moving to Hunslet this year.

He is primarily a halfback but has also been known to play at hooker and loose forward.

 

 

 

The Fev Connection

N.B. Spencer Darley, who is in the 2024 Hunslet squad, signed for Fev in 2019 but never played, going out on loan to Keighley for whom he signed in 2020.

Amongst those 134 players who have played for both clubs are Peter Fox, John Willie Higson, Ikram Butt and Neil Gray.

Many Fev fans consider Peter Fox to have been Fev’s greatest ever head coach. Peter began his playing career at Fev playing 34 times between 1953 and 1956 before moving on to Batley, Hull KR, Hunslet and Wakefield. He played just two games for Hunslet in the 1963-64 season.

Playing for Fev in our earliest days as an amateur team, prop forward John Willie Higson then signed for Hunslet in 1905. During his time at Hunslet he was a member of their historic ‘Four Cups’ winning team in the 1907-08 season. He moved to Huddersfield in 1910 and also won the ‘Four Cups’ there in 1914-15 and is the only ever player to have achieved that twice! He returned to Fev when they joined the Northern Rugby League in 1921 and made 99 appearances for Fev before spending his last two seasons with Wakefield from 1925 to 1927. During his time at Hunslet he played for both England and Great Britain.

There will be many current Fev fans who remember watching Ikram Butt playing on the wing for Fev between 1990 and 1995, joining us from Leeds. Ikram played for Fev 168 times and scored 66 tries. He was a very popular player who was a master at bouncing out of tackles. Whilst he was at Fev he became the first British player of Asian heritage to play for England. After his time at Post Office Road he played for London Broncos and Huddersfield. His last club was Hunslet in 1998.

We had to include Neil Gray (hooker) in our comments about players who played for both clubs even though he only played 7 times for Fev (between 1980 and 1981). He had started with Doncaster in 1978 and after his time at Fev he joined Hunslet for 3 seasons from 1983 until 1986. He then emigrated to New Zealand and played for Huntley South and Waikato. So why, you might think, has fevnut included Neil in this group. Well, it’s for personal reasons. fevnut’s first teaching job was at Normanton County Secondary School in 1969 and there in one of our classes was a young lad called Neil Gray! Neil is still in New Zealand and we have maintained contact via facebook.