T'Other Side: Sheffield Eagles

   

Head Coach: Craig Lingard

 

It feels strange not to be writing about Mark Aston in this section! He had been the Sheffield Eagles head coach from 2000 to July 2024 with just one year out when he became the Eagles Chief Executive for 2006 and Gary Wilkinson was the head coach for that year. Now, in 2025, it is Craig Lingard.

Craig was the head coach at Keighley from 2017 to May 2019. He then became head coach at Batley from 2020 to 2023 and Castleford in 2024.

His entire playing career was at Batley from 1998 to 2008. He played 205 games, almost always at fullback, for them and scored 142 tries which is the all-time record for the club.

After retiring as a player he became an assistant coach at Batley, a position he occupied from 2009 until 2016 apart from one year (2012) when he went to be head coach at Bramley Buffaloes.

 

Captain: Joel Farrell

 

Joel Farrell has been appointed as the Sheffield Eagles captain for 2025, succeeding Anthony Thackeray who retired at the end of last season.

Primarily a second rower, he started out with Dewsbury in 2014 and also played on loan for Gateshead Thunder that year. In 2017 he transferred to Batley and then joined Sheffield in 2019 and has been there ever since. If he plays on Sunday (he missed last weekend's match), it will be his 125th game for the Eagles.

 

Dual Registration and Loans

 

As far as we know, Sheffield do not have a dual registration agreement in 2025 and nor have they been involved in any loan deals yet this year.

 

The Fev Connection

For the first time in many years there are no current Featherstone Rovers players who have previously played for Sheffield Eagles.

70 players have played for both Fev and Sheffield. We usually like to highlight at least one player from the early days of Fev but that’s not possible this time as Sheffield Eagles only became a professional club in 1984.

 

A real Fev hero, Vince Farrar (forward). We call him forward because he actually played in all the pack positions. In his 309 games for Fev, he started at prop 137 times, at hooker 86 times, at loose forward 56 times and in the second row on just 8 occasions. Before you add those up and realise that it doesn’t give you the 309 games, he also came on from the subs bench 22 times and scored 61 tries. His first-grade career began with his Fev début in August 1965 as an eighteen-year-old and became a regular fixture in the Fev team (except when injured) through to November 1977.

As a Fev player his honours included a Challenge Cup winners medal in 173 and he captained the Rovers championship winning side in 1976-77. He, of course, was also a member of the Featherstone Hall of Fame. Whilst a Fev player he also played for Yorkshire and England.

When he finished playing for Rovers he was transferred to Hull and played there until he retired at the end of the 1979-80 season and moved into the coaching staff there. Whilst at Hull he also played for Great Britain.

In 1981-82 he was the Fev head coach from February 1981 until December 1982.

Such was his huge reputation that he was persuaded to come out of playing retirement to play for Sheffield Eagles for their first season in 1984-85. You might imagine that a player who had been retired for several years would only play a few games, but he actually played 22 times for Sheffield and scored 2 tries.

You might think that is the whole of his playing career but in the time between the 1973-74 and the 1974-75 season he was to be found in Australia playing 18 games (all at prop) and scoring a try for Cronulla.

 

Matt James (prop) made his professional début with Bradford Bulls in 2006. During the 2009 season he spent some of the year on loan at Halifax and then at the end of the year he left Bradford and signed for Harlequins RL (London Broncos) in 2010 but only played 3 games for them before joining Barrow in March. He spent the 2012 season at Wakefield, his hometown club, and also had another loan spell at Halifax.

After the one season at Wakefield he joined Fev in 2013. He spent 3 seasons with Rovers, made 76 appearances and scored 17 tries.

He then joined Sheffield Eagles where he played from 2016 until his retirement at the end of 2021. For Sheffield he totalled 117 games and scored 16 tries and was captain from 2017 until 2021. However, despite retiring at the end of 2021 he came back to play for Doncaster in 2023.

As a youngster he played for the England U18 team and then went on to play twice for Wales during the 2008 World Cup qualifiers.

 

Anthony 'Tony' Tonks (prop) made his professional début with Doncaster in 2006 and then moved to Oldham in 2007. Although on the losing side, he made quite an impression in the National League Two play-off final against Fev who promptly signed him for the following year after winning promotion back to National League One. He played for Fev for four seasons and made 105 appearances and scored 18 tries. In 2012 he joined Super League side Huddersfield but was unable to establish a regular place in the side and in July he transferred to Halifax. Sheffield Eagles signed him for the 2015 where he played 24 games and scored two tries. He retired after two further seasons playing for Dewsbury Rams.

After the death of Danny Jones, Tony became the chief executive of the charity ‘Heartbeat of Sport’ and campaigned very effectively for all rugby league clubs to have the equipment to deal with heart problems and for full screening of all players for heart issues.