T'Other Side: Hunslet

 

Head Coach: Kyle Trout and Michael Knowles (caretaker head coaches)

 

Dean Muir was in his second year as head coach of Hunslet, replacing Alan Kilshaw who has now moved to take charge of Swinton Lions. However, a couple of weeks ago he departed and their assistant coaches Kyle Trout and Michael Knowles are now acting as joint caretaker head coaches. They have both played for Fev in the past.

 

 

Captain: Matthew Fletcher

 

For most of this season Matty Beharrel was the Hunslet captain but he has now joined Keighley and Matthew Fletcher has taken over as captain. He started his first grade career with Oldham in 2020. During 2021 he transferred to Dewsbury and in 2021 he joined North Wales, During 2024 he had a loan spell with Swinton and then transferred to Hunslet.

He played for Scotland against Ireland in 2024 and played for the Scotland U19 team in 2018.

 

Dual Registration

 

For 2025 Hunslet have signed a dual registration agreement with Huddersfield Giants. The only Huddersfield Giants squad member who has played for Hunslet in 2025 is Thomas Deakin (hooker) who has made just one substitute appearance.

 

 

The Fev Connection

Surprisingly, none of the current Fev squad have ever played for Hunslet.

 

Amongst those 140 players who we know have played for both clubs are Allan Agar, Keith Bell and Andy Kain.

It’s not often that we include someone in this section who only played 4 times for Fev but Allan Agar is far more important to Rovers than the 4 games he played!

He made his Fev début as an 18 year old in 1968 but, finding it hard to get first team selection he moved to Dewsbury in 1969. After 6 seasons there he signed for New Hunslet, as they were called at the time, in 1975 and after two seasons moved on to Hull KR and then Wakefield. His last club as a player was Carlisle where he became the player-coach for their inaugural season as a professional club.

During the 1982-83 season he came back to Fev as head coach and led them to Challenge Cup victory in 1983. Having beaten both Salford and St. Helens in the earlier rounds in away ties they met Hull (who were the league champions) at Wembley in the final and in one of the greatest ever final upsets Fev beat Hull 14-12.

 

Keith Bell also made his début for Fev as an 18 year old. That was in November 1971. In a big contrast to Allan Agar’s 34 games, Keith played 417 times for Rovers and scored 57 tries, kicked 7 goals and an amazing 67 (that’s not a typo!) drop goals. Indeed it may have been more because 5 out of the 7 goals he is credited with were before the drop goal was reduced from 2 points to one and while drop goals were 12 points no distinction was made in the records between drop goals, penalties and conversions.

417 appearances is far longer than the usual complete career of the vast majority of players, but Keith went on to play for Hunslet from 1990 to 1993 and there he made 49 appearances and scored 2 tries.

Keith also played for Yorkshire and Great Britain U24s and in many people’s opinion was very unfortunate never to get a full international cap.

Although he was usually playing at loose forward, he also played for Fev in the second row and at hooker. He even played a couple of games each at prop and scrumhalf!

 

Andy Kain (halfback or hooker) played for Castleford from 2004 to 2006. In 2007 he moved to Widnes but came to Fev on loan in June of that year. Fev then signed him for the 2008 season and he was an important part of the Rovers team which won the Championship League Leaders Shield 4 years in a row from 2010-2013. His total record for Fev was 210 games in which he scored 128 tries, kicked 6 goals and 1 drop goal. Andy scored 11 hat tricks as a Fev player which gives him the Fev record.  It is a record that will probably stand for a long time, if not forever. The next highest are Paul Newlove with 8 and then Gareth Gale and Jamie Stokes with 7 each.

In 2015 Andy joined Hunslet where he made 18 appearances and scored 4 tries. He finished with two seasons at Dewsbury (2016 and 2017) before he retired.