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. There have, however, been quite a lot of loans and as far as we know the following are currently with Sheffield:

Harry Bowes (hooker) from Keighley, Brad Gallagher (second row) from Oldham and Josh Hodson (centre) from Castleford,

The Fev Connection

73 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.

John Davies (mainly second row) but during his time at Fev he also played at loose forward, hooker, centre and stand-off. There are RL Superstars which would not include John but there are other players who were very special and Fev fans would undoubtedly class him in that category. Wherever he played he displayed great skill but above all he always gave 100% effort. That’s why Fev fans loved him so much!

John’s professional career started at Castleford in 2010 and during three years there he also played for York and Dewsbury on dual reg.  In 2013 he moved to Batley and then in 2014 he joined Sheffield.

He signed for Fev in 2016 where he stayed until 2023. He decided to retire at the end of 2024 after a single season playing for Bradford.

For Sheffield he played 27 times and scored 3 tries.

At Fev he totalled 182 appearances and scored 45 tries. Playing against Swinton in 2017 John kicked 2 goals out of 2 attempts. Those were the only goals he ever attempted so he ended with a 100% goal-kicking success record!

 

Michael Haley (prop) began with Leeds in 2002 but he made his début playing on loan at Doncaster that year. In 2003 he joined Doncaster but transferred to Sheffield in June of that year. In 2011 he joined Fev and spent 2 years with us before moving to Hunslet in 2013 and retired at the end of the 2019 season.

For Sheffield he played 29 times.

At Fev he totalled 33 appearances and scored 3 tries.

 

Misi Taulapapa (centre) began his professional career with New Zealand Warriors in 2006 and then had three years with Cronulla Sharks before coming to the UK to play for Sheffield where he spent 6 seasons from 2010 to 2015. In 2016 he joined Fev and was a very popular player during three seasons. In 2019 he joined Newcastle thunder and his career finished at Doncaster where he played from 2021 to 2024, retiring at the age of 42! He also had a loan spell with Rochdale last year.

For Sheffield he played 159 times and scored 70 tries.

At Fev he totalled 80 appearances and scored 32 tries.

We enjoyed having a brief chat with Misi after the recent game at Doncaster.