‘Dave Allen said stick at it, you’ll get through it and I did’ - Lloyd
HOW COMEDIAN’S WISE WORDS HELPED HULL STAR RECOVER FROM HIS BELOW-PAR WEMBLEY EFFORT
Sammy Lloyd thought his rugby league career was coming to an end before he joined Hull FC in 1978, but little did he know that the most eventful time of it was still ahead.
Lloyd enjoyed a fine spell at Castleford Tigers, spending nine years at Wheldon Road, before his arm was twisted by Arthur Bunting to join the Black and Whites as he continued to revamp his squad.
In truth, it was a step down for the back-rower. Hull had just been relegated from the Championship into the Second Division, but with Lloyd arriving, among the likes of Paul Prendiville, Charlie Stone and Steve Norton, they were a force to be reckoned with.
He certainly made an impression on his debut, converting a recordequalling 14 goals in a 61-10 win over Oldham that set the tone for a season that still lives long in the memory of everyone involved.
Bunting’s new look side sailed through the 1978-79 season, winning all 26 league games, leading them to be dubbed ‘the Invincibles.’
“It was a time of transformation, so the gates at the Boulevard just started getting bigger and bigger and we were on the crest of a wave,” Lloyd remembers.
“We never thought about getting beat, we did have the odd off day, but it was totally brutal, the set up.
“We used to do amazing things, things that I’d never done in other clubs. Like Vince (Farrar), for example, used to tell me to kick it deep and say ‘we don’t want the ball for the next 20 minutes, we just want to knock seven bells out of these.’
“It didn’t take 20 minutes sometimes, they just knew they would be worn down and then we’d play a bit of rugby and we’d end up winning. It was close on occasions, but we won every game, which is remarkable.
“We never used to look at ourselves as invincible at all, far from it, we just used to take the mickey out of each other and if you couldn’t stand that, you weren’t going to last long in the team.”
Lloyd certainly brought his kicking boots from Castleford, slotting 170 in his first season -another record - as Bunting’s new group saw off every side that dare challenge them.
They were clicking on the field, but they were bonding off it, too.
“We thought we were being professional but we used to get a lot of beer down us, we trained extremely hard, you couldn’t play in a team with Knocker and not get some beer down you,” he added.
“We’d train really hard and then Knocker would say, ‘where’s a pub that we haven’t been to yet?,’ and some of the Hull lads like Keith Tindall and Keith Boxall, would say, ‘let’s take you to The Land of Green Ginger, and Ye Olde Black Boy and the White Harte.
“The supporters, whenever I came home to Cas, and I tried telling my buddies about it, they’d say ‘oh bugger off, it can’t be that good!’
“The folks in Hull are just fanatical about the game. It’s a different mentality and a view of the game, we loved that and responded to it. We’d have a minimum of five points just them being there singing our names.”
Promotion claimed, Hull would finish as high as third in the top flight in 1980 behind Bradford Northern and Widnes, comfortably above their cross-city rivals Hull KR.
But that year also signalled Lloyd’s first hiccup in a Black and White shirt. The 40th anniversary of the Challenge Cup final is less than two weeks away, but still the 68-year-old vividly remembers that day at Wembley against KR.
“I was picking up injuries left and right and I was held together with bits of string,” he said. “But that