History of Wakefield Trinity
In 1873 a group of young men from the local Holy Trinity Church formed the Wakefield Trinity club. One of the initial forces in the game, Trinity won the Yorkshire Cup four times in nine years and was one of the initial 22 clubs to form the Northern Union after the acrimonious split from the RFU in 1895.

Trinity won the NU Challenge Cup for the first time in 1909, beating Hull 17-0 at Headingly. The corresponding 1914 final saw the result reversed, with Hull winning 6-0, and proved to be an accurate guide to the teams pre-war endeavours, as Trinity lost four Yorkshire Cups in the thirties with a side that included club stalwart Jonty Parkin.

If the pre-war years were austere then the post-war period was bright and bullish for the Dreadnoughts. The first Wembley final after the war produced a return to winning ways as Trinity, with names such as Billy Stott, Herbert Goodfellow and Mick Exley, pipped Wigan to the Cup 12-13.

The club was not destined to return to Wembley until 1960 and had to slake its thirst for silverware on two Yorkshire Cup and two Yorkshire League victories in the 1950’s. Wakefield returned to Wembley emphatically with a record 38-5 win v Hull under the guidance of coach Ken Traill and loose forward Derek “Rocky” Turner.

Wakefield won their third Challenge Cup victory two years later in 1962, running out 12-6 winners v Huddersfield. The successful defence of the Cup the next year iced a spectacular period in the club’s history with three Wembley titles in four years. Further renown was arrested due to two Championship Final defeats in 1960 and 1962 v Wigan and Huddersfield respectively.

One of Trinity’s great servants, centre Neil Fox, who scored a record 6,220 points in his 23 year career (19 with Wakefield) was coming to prominence, however, in Trinity’s up and coming side. The club were victorious in a dour 1962 Challenge Cup win over Huddersfield although the Fartowners went on to deny them the double a few days later in the Championship final.

With a victorious defence of the Cup in 1963, their fifth Challenge Cup title, Wakefield had still not been able to achieve the league championship title. The Holy Grail would be achieved in the 1966-67 season when a seasoned, Harold Poynton led side that included Neil and Don Fox, Gary Cooper and Ray Owen, defeated Saints in a replay. They repeated the title feat the following year v Hull KR but were again denied the double when Leeds defeated them in the 1968 ‘water splash’ final at Wembley.

Wakefield absorbed a number of different coaches at the helm in subsequent years but did not return to Wembley until Bill Kirkbride’s talented charges fell 12-3 to Widnes in 1979 in front of nearly 100,000 people.

The ensuing decline was temporarily halted when ‘the King’ Wally Lewis signed up for a brief spell with the club. But even the presence of the mercurial Kangaroo five-eighth couldn’t prevent an inconsistent Wakefield from fluctuating between the two divisions. Former player David Topliss stabilised the Dreadnoughts’ ship in the late eighties. He won immediate promotion in 1988 and consolidated the clubs top tier status by acquiring the services of seasoned internationals like Steve Ella, Mark Graham, Brian Jackson as well as present Wildcats’ coach Andy Kelly.

Wakefield were reduced to lower division football with the arrival of Super League in 1995 but earned their place in the top flight on the back of their dramatic victory over Featherstone in the inaugural Division One Grand Final in 1998.

This information has been kindly provided by Wakefield Trinity

Charles Waterton

Was a naturalist and explorer born in Walton Hall, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in 1782 and died there in 1865. His family, originally from Lincolnshire, had migrated to Yorkshire several hundred years before and its pre-Reformation members in many cases were eminent in the service of the State. Staunch Royalists as well as Catholics, they suffered from England's changes of faith and allegiance, and by the constant exactions and fines of penal times they become much impoverished. Charles's mother was a Bedingfeld of Inburgh, Norfolk, granddaughter of Sir Henry, the third baronet, and his paternal grandmother was Mary More, the seventh in descent from Blessed Thomas, the martyred chancellor.

Charles was sent to a small Catholic school at Tudhoe, near Durham, aged 10, the first English home of Mr. Jutine Ushaw. He passed in 1796 for his higher studies to Stonyhurst. His four years' stay at Stonyhurst, while it succeeded in making him a good Latin scholar, developed still more his early passion for natural history, especially for the study of ornithology. "By a mutual understanding, he writes in his "Autobiography", I was considered rat-catcher to the establishment, and also fox-taker, foumart-killer, and cross-bow charger at the time when the young rooks were fledged. . . I followed up my calling with great success. The vermin disappeared by the dozen; the books were moderately well thumbed; and according to my notion of things, all went on perfectly right." On leaving school the Peace of Amiens in 1802 gave him his first chance of travelling and he went to Spain, where two of his maternal uncles had settled. He was with them in Malaga when the great plague occurred there, and, though he escaped infection, he returned impaired in health. In search of a warmer climate he undertook the administration of his uncles' estates in British Guiana and resided in Georgetown from 1804 to 1812, with occasional visits home. Meanwhile, in 1806 his father died, leaving him heir to Walton Hall. After handing over the West Indian estates to their owners, he determined to start exploring Guiana at intervals beginning with 1812, he made the four adventurous expeditions which are described in the well-known "Wanderings in South America". For this work his long residence in the colony had rendered him exceptionally well equipped and he made very valuable additions to the sum of human knowledge concerning the fauna, especially the bird life, of that portion of the tropics. The main object of his first journey was to collect as large a quantity as possible of the deadly "wourali" poison, which induces immediate and profound quiescence, and would therefore, it was hoped, prove a specific against the tetanus of hydrophobia. That result has not been attained; however, Waterton's experiments with the poison proved that its deadly effects could be neutralized by keeping up artificial respiration during the period of its activity. His other services to science have been more valuable and permanent. By combining an unrivalled knowledge of the living habits of the wild creation with a new method of preserving skins, he raised (to use the words of Dr. Moore) "taxidermy from a sorry handicraft to an art". In 1829, five years after his last expedition, Waterton married the daughter of an old Demerara friend, who, however died with a year, leaving him with one child, a boy, well known later on as an antiquary. His subsequent travels, of which he has given a summary in the "Autobiography", were confined to the Continent, but during his last sojourn in the New World he twice visited the States, considering, as he said, no Englishman's education complete till he had been there.

After surviving so many perils abroad, Waterton met his death in his own park through stumbling over a briar-root. This was in 1865 when he was in his eighty-third year: an internal injury resulted in his death in a few hours. He was so inured to hardship that it had become second nature. For the last thirty years of his life he always slept on bare boards, wrapped in a blanket and with a block of oak for a pillow. From this couch he rose at midnight to spend a few minutes in the chapel; he rose again at three o'clock, made his fire and lay down again till half-past, when he dressed and spent an hour at prayer. Breakfast followed a further three hours' work or reading, and the rest of the day was spent about his estate in the business of a country gentleman. He had walled in the park and forbade any destruction of wild life within its bounds, so that it became a perfect paradise of animated nature. His charity to the poor was constant and unostentatious, and his personal piety unaffected and deep. His faith was so staunch and undisguised that it was continually manifested, even in the most unexpected places, in his scientific papers. Of his strength of will and dauntless courage his own writings give much indirect evidence, for he made generally light of his exploits. The value of his work was recognized by Darwin, who visited him at Walton Hall, and his friend Thackeray, in a well-known passage in "The Newcomes", testifies to his moral worth: "I could not but feel a kindness and admiration for the good man. I know his works are made to square with his faith; that he dines on a crust, lives as chastely as a hermit, and gives his all to the poor."