Nostalgia: Harry and Sol had formula for a perfect partnership

The side was so good that it reached the final of both the Rugby League Challenge Cup and the League Championship in the same season (1958) and, at the age of 21, Sol Roper became the youngest ever Wembley skipper.

By all accounts, the lad from Pica should have been the one to lift the coveted Challenge Cup – Town were reckoned to be the better side in front of a 66,000 crowd in the televised final against glamorous Wigan – but the honour went instead to the peerless Eric Ashton, who died recently.

But despite losing both big finals within a week of each other, Workington’s class of ’58 is still rated as one of the two best sides in the history of Cumberland rugby league. Some rank it the equal of Gus Risman’s heroes who won the Challenge Cup and the League Championship for Town in successive seasons, 1951-52.

Archer and Roper had the chemistry – when they clicked, Town ticked. Brilliant individually but it was a case of being even better together – the perfect half-back partnership.

Harry was all jinking artistry and aplomb; a master of the stand-off play which won him a place on the famous Great Britain Ashes-winning tour of Australia in 1958.

Sol was a born leader whose scrum-half craftsmanship was matched only by his fierce courage in tackling heavyweight forwards. Together they carved their own inimitable niche in the game both for Workington Town and some wonderful Cumberland teams that won the county championship.

With the 50th anniversary of the dramatic ’58 Challenge Cup final fast approaching, The Whitehaven News brought together the distinguished pair to reminisce about the final and the great players they played with and against in the good old days of one league and unlimited tackles.

Wigan had Ashton, Boston, Bolton, Sullivan, McTigue, but did you think you could go to Wembley and beat them as the Cumbrian underdogs? “Oh, yes,” says Sol. “That season, we went 23 games without being beaten, so we went to Wembley on top form but Harry got injured in the first 10 minutes, while Brian Edgar and Andy Key also got bad knocks.”

Didn’t Mick Sullivan, the Wigan mean machine, come in and take you out with a stiff-arm tackle? “Aye, I think Mick was trying to hang us,” Harry recalls. “He was renowned for being a hard-tackling winger but, pound-for-pound, he was hard to beat in attack and defence.

“After that happened, I can’t remember a thing. They took me off but I didn’t even know it; I was out cold. I came back on but couldn’t remember the match at all and I don’t know how I got through it.

“Sol carried us.”

Did you know just how bad he was?

“Yeah, he couldn’t make any breaks or anything,” says Sol.

“He carried on just getting in the road of Wigan, and that was it. Mind you, we did score a try from the move in which Harry was knocked out.

“Southward got the ball and went through and scored a great try. As soon as Sully hit him, Harry passed the ball and Ike was in.

“That was champion – we were in front 3-0. Of course we only had 12 fit men, then Andy (Key) got banged. After that, Andy never played another game. He was jiggered.

“I wouldn’t say Wigan were a dirty team but Sully never even got a caution. If he’d done it today, he would have been red-carded right away.

“Wigan led 13-9 into the last five minutes, but we were starting to press them only for Ike to drop the ball over the try line.

“Norman Cherrington ankle-tapped him and Ike lost the ball. We never said out to him but Ike said afterwards he was trying to turn in for the sticks and make the conversion easy when he got caught.”

Most neutrals thought Town were the better team on the day. “We probably were,” says Sol, “but it doesn’t always say that the best team wins.”

Harry has his own recollections on the game. “I can vaguely remember Ike going over in the corner but I can’t recall going up for my medal – it was just one of those things.

“It wasn’t until two or three hours after the match that things started coming back.

“No sooner had we got home by train on the Sunday than we were playing again on the Monday, at Salford. Then at the weekend, it was the other big one, the Championship final against Hull at Odsal stadium.

“It wasn’t good. We had injuries and I gave a try away. Going back 50 years, I think we were just the kind of team that went to Wembley more to enjoy it.

“In them days, winning wasn’t all there was to it. Today, if you are not a winner then you’re nothing. I don’t think we had that attitude because getting to Wembley was the ultimate.”

Not that Roper, who had been beaten by Barrow as a teenager in the 1955 Wembley final, would necessarily agree! “Oh, it would have been nice to win,” he admits. “I was a winner.”

Town supremo Tom Mitchell once called Harry Archer “The Architect” and, as a pair, Archer and Roper were described as the craft and the graft.

So who did most of Harry’s tackling?

“I used to do it all for him,” Sol laughs. “We were a partnership.We trained together, we played together, worked for a time together at the Steelworks, and we were firm friends off the field.”

Harry agreed. “We just had a good understanding and we knew we were capable of holding our own against any combination that was put up against us, simple as that.

“In that particular pack, we had one or two who became Great Britain stars like Norman Herbert and Brian (Edgar) and Ces Thompson, who was already an international. And Andy Key would definitely have gone on to play for his country.

“Town had five ball handlers, and we also had the pace and the best two finishers in the game – Ike and Bill Wookey. We played football, made the ball do the work and scored a bagful of tries.

“One match says it all about Sol Roper. We were playing Wigan at Central Park. We were 10 yards off our own line and big Bill Barton comes crashing through – all 17-stone of him heading straight for Sol.

“I just grabbed hold of Sol’s jersey and pulled him out of the way. Sol would tackle anything but this time it wasn’t worth it – we were well beaten anyway.”

In an imaginary match between the Risman team (51-52) and the Jim Brough team (58), would you have fancied your chances?

“Yeah. Especially if we could have taken Eppie (Gibson) on to our side,” Harry insists.

“Eppie had gone to Whitehaven the season before but I think if we could have kept him for another couple of seasons we would have been unbeatable. John (Loppy) O’Neill would have been the centres; Danny Leatherbarrow, who came from Barrow, was playing well but I think Eppie would have made the difference.

“The only other regret is that the following season was a disaster. Things just went haywire. Ike went to Oldham, I didn’t play for six months after coming back injured from the tour, Andy was out, Ces and Bill Wookey went to Barrow, Danny also left and the team just disintegrated with injuries and players leaving.

“We built up another good side which went on to win the Western Division Championship in 1962. We had two new wingers, both top class, in Ray Glastonbury and the South African Piet Pretorius. Eddie Brennan was a class centre and the likes of big Bill Martin and Frankie Foster and Matty McLeod came into the pack.”

Four Town players – Harry, Ike, Edgar and Wookey – went on the Great Britain Tour after the Wembley Championship finals, but Sol wasn’t included.

“He was fit to go in ‘58 and should definitely have gone in ‘62,” Harry feels.

“It’s down to whether your name comes out of the bag. I can also name Eppie Gibson, Billy Ivison, Syd Lowdon, it’s just how it falls for you.”

Archer’s name was definitely on the list after scoring a dazzling hat-trick of tries partnering the prodigy Alex Murphy in one of the Tour trials.

“Yeah, that was unique for me,” he laughs. “I was in the ‘Possibles’ with Dick Huddart and we beat the ‘Probables’ easily. I had already been selected in the shadow team for England to play France and the last 36 for the World Cup the year before so I’d like to think I was in the frame well before the hat-trick.”

What was it like playing with Murphy, Frank Pitchford and Dave Bolton in some of the early games of the tour, one of them on the famous Sydney Cricket Ground?

“Great experience but I actually enjoyed playing with Sol the most. Murphy was good enough to play in any middle-back position and Pitchford was another top scrum-half.”

If you had your choice of playing regularly with Murphy, Pitchford or Sol, who would it be? –

“Mr Roper, it’s a must. We played against these guys as a combination quite a few times, Murphy/Rhodes, Kellett/Pitchford, Frank Myler, Jeff Stevenson and the like.

“Our secret was that we played for one another. We came up against St Helens in the semi-final of the championship play-off and Murphy was actually the cause of us winning at Knowsley Road.

“He tried a drop-kick when they were pressing us hard in the last 10 minutes and lost the ball.

“We just used to go out and play – we were beating everybody.”

Harry’s compensation for the two final defeats was going on Tour – “Yes, but it was a bit of a disaster.”

You got a bad injury and also a fine for breaking a curfew?

“It was a silly thing. We were just sitting in the hotel having a drink when Jim Brough (coach) said we had to go to bed. I was only having a conversation with one of the Australian selectors, but I think Jim must have been looking for a scapegoat because of everything that was happening around us.

“The upshot was that I had to use a bit of blackmail; Eric Frazer, our full-back, suggested I go to see Tom Mitchell (team manager) and say I wanted to go home if my fine wasn’t quashed. It was!”

Why didn’t you go to bed when you were told? – “I was just being stupid.

“After the Sydney game, I was supposed to play against New South Wales but I told Tom I couldn’t play because my groin had gone. That was the end of me. I was out of the Tour until we went to New Zealand, where I played just the one match.

“Thinking back, I should really have come home but, then again, I had relations in New Zealand!”

Were you in contention for a Test place before the incident? –

“No, Dave Bolton was the man. I never took things that seriously. If I was to go back now, I would want to get into that Test side, which was one of the best ever.”

I reckon if Roper had been on that Tour he would have been all out for that Test spot.

“Too true, I would have been,” agrees Sol. “I had to win every time.”

If Harry had really put his mind to it, do you think he would have been a better player? – “No. He was good enough as he was. I don’t care about Bolton and the rest; Harry Archer was the best stand-off half.

“We also did all right for Cumberland in the county championship. I have three medals for that; we could boss any half-backs we came up against. When we went on that field, we weren’t frightened of anybody.”

Was it a sad day when this partnership broke up? – “Well, when you lose your mate, it must be like losing your wife,” says Sol.

“We were training this night and I said to Harry: ‘I don’t think we are in the first team this Saturday; the coach hasn’t even spoken to us’.

“We were going to Oldham, and Harry said he wasn’t going. ‘I can make more selling pies (he was a grocer at the time)’ and he told the coach (Billy Ivison) that.

“I went to Broughton Moor, Harry went to Whitehaven, I then ended up at Whitehaven but we only played one ‘A’ team game together. Harry was going on for 35 and reckoned it was time to call it a day.

“In our time, there were a lot of good stand-offs – Myler, Gabbitas, Bolton, George Parkinson of Swinton – but we always thought that, when the opposition looked at the match programme and saw Archer and Roper, they were half beaten already.”

Sol, who as Whitehaven player/coach, took the team to top of the league in 1970, says the best scrum-half he played against was not Murphy but Pitchford.

Any decent scrum halves today? “I like the lad playing for Leeds, Rob Burrow,” according to Sol

And Harry? – “I like Sean Long, from St Helens.”

But Sol bemoans: “There’s hardly a move in rugby league today from the half-backs. That’s what the spectators used to like to see. Now it’s just bang, bang bash and six tackles then kick. Nearly all the tries today are all off kicks.”

Who was the best player in that great Town team?

Sol: “Harry Archer”.

Harry: “Sol Roper”.

They truly were the perfect partnership.