The biggest day today in the club’s history was in 1899 as the season came to an end with records and a first Cup Final in the Northern Union.
It was a trip to Manchester for the Challenge Cup final at Fallowfield against Oldham. Hunslet travelled in a special saloon car attached to the eleven o’clock Lancashire and Yorkshire Express. 16,000 was given as the attendance and Hunslet chose to play with the wind at their backs. Albert Goldthorpe opened the scoring with a penalty in the third minute. From the re-start Walter Goldthorpe and Jack Mitchell had a “misunderstanding” with Lees kicking the loose ball to score a converted try. Walter made up for his mistake by grabbing a try converted by his brother. Shortly afterwards Oldham were penalised in the scrum and Albert dropped a “beautiful and admirably judged kick” from the half way line. Half-time came with Hunslet in front 9-5.
As the second half progressed Oldham closed the gap with a try and shortly after Hunslet were down to twelve men as Walter G left the field with a broken collar bone and from this point it was all Oldham as further scores gave them a 19-9 victory.
Albert’s goals in the cup final took him to the top of the league goal scorers with 67, a new league and club record in Northern Union. His 161 points were a new club record in the new era but Jacques of Hull got 169 to top the league’s list.
The programme for today’s game at home to Huddersfield in 1984 reported that it was records all the way for New Hunslet. With today’s game and an away game at Carlisle still to come Eric Fitzsimons had broken the goals and points in a season (despite breaking his leg at the beginning of March). Tries in a season had been passed by both Graham King and Phil Tate and league points gained had already been surpassed.
In the Great War only friendly matches were played but the papers put results together for an unofficial league table. 1915/16 ended with Hunslet 14th out of 24. Harold Buck had most tries (23) with 5 goals giving him 79 points, Sam Hullighan had most goals with 15. Hunslet’s celebrated three-quarter Billy Batten had re-appeared for one game as a guest from Hull. International winger Freddie Farrar had suffered with knee problems and had not played for two seasons but turned out at the start of the season at Hull but that was to be the end of his career.
1892/93 ended today. It was the second season of Union’s Yorkshire Senior Competition and Hunslet won 10 of their 18 fixtures to finish second. To make up the number of fixtures, clubs also played friendlies known ordinary or club matches. These, together the the Yorkshire Cup, made the number of games 40 of which 25 were won and 3 drawn.
