Man of All Talents

Steven Bell

Description

A Man of All Talents is the remarkable story of rugby and wrestling legend Douglas "Duggy" Clark. Born in 1891 in the sleepy Cumbrian village of Maryport, at 14 he left school to work for his father's coal merchant business. Duggy grew into an exceptionally strong but quiet and reserved young man. His two great passions were rugby and Cumberland and Westmorland-style wrestling, and he excelled at both. By 24 he was already a rugby league great and a key member of Huddersfield's "Team of All Talents," winning every honor the sport could offer. He represented Britain in the infamous 1914 "Rorke's Drift" tour of Australia before being called up to serve in the Great War. He was awarded the Military Medal for bravery, but his war injuries were so severe he was discharged with a 20% disability certificate. Doctors gave Duggy an ultimatum: either he could stay home and live a long but sedate and ordinary life or risk his health by returning to sport. He chose the latter and went on to achieve more extraordinary and pioneering feats.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing
• Date de parution: 05 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785318054
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Steven Bell, 2020
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785316821
eBook ISBN 9781785318054
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue
1. A Coal Boy, a Laker, a Candlestick Maker
2. Catch-As-Catch-Can
3. A Northern Union
4. Freddy Waggy
5. Rorke s Drift
6. The Team of All Talents
7. Robinson Crusade
8. Zero Hour
9. Menin Road
10. Hors de Combat
11. The Boys are Back in Fartown
12. Back to Roots
13. All-In
14. Best-Laid Plans
15. John Bull in Trunks
16. God s Own Country
17. Proud Are We
18. The Lion s Den
19. The J.S. Connections
20. This was a Man
Epilogue: Halls of Fame
Acknowledgements and Bibliography
Dedicated to a whole, great generation. And to my baby son Bruno, who was born during the writing of this book.
With special thanks to:
Martin Bell Nicola Bell Matthew Isherwood Elizabeth James David Gronow Chris Roberts David Thorpe
INTRODUCTION
As legends go, he was the genuine article.
NOTHING MUCH happens in the sleepy towns of northern England. Sure, Leeds and Manchester are now wonderfully modern and cosmopolitan, but just a ten-minute car journey in the right (or wrong, as the case may be) direction from those big-city lights will take you to towns and villages set in the rolling countryside that time appears to have long forgotten.
The local farm shops are widely regarded as the beacon of hope for jobs and investment in the area, as well as the lucrative weekly treat of a bag of expensive shopping and a froffy coffee .
The pubs and working men s clubs are dilapidated and the regulars like it that way, as modernisation would only hike the price of a John Smith s Extra Smooth further up towards the dreaded 3 mark.
I, the author, am from the small mining town of Featherstone, West Yorkshire, and a more tightly knit community you could never envisage. He s a character, we tend to say of one another when names come up in conversation. It gets said a lot - they re all characters. It s a rugby league town where the local part-time club, Featherstone Rovers, sits at the epicentre - at least since Margaret Thatcher closed the local coal mines that supported the area and its families.
After my first book was set in Brazil, I wanted to bring a local and forgotten sporting story into literature - something historic, from these lands that Father Time has left behind.
I discovered the story of Malcolm Kirk, a man from my very own Featherstone, who followed the stereotypical route of a local lad who was fit and strong. He got a job darn t pit , and he was good and lucky enough to play for t Rovers as a young man in the 1950s. His rugby career also saw him play for Wakefield and Doncaster. A giant man with a big heart and strong as an ox, he realised that second-tier rugby league wasn t a sustainable long-term career. Conveniently, some of his team-mates at Doncaster had contacts in the relatively new and upcoming world of professional wrestling, and saw him and his mammoth physique as perfect for the sport.
By the time the flared trousers and the 1970s came around, Mal found himself on national TV on a weekly basis as ITV s World of Sport displayed him and his fellow behemoths sweatily grappling with one another every week to a transfixed audience of millions. His natural talent, huge physique and intimidating aura saw him become a hit not just in Britain but around the world under the guise of a bad-guy persona in King Kong Kirk.
Bye-eck, now he was a character, is the sure-fire response you ll get when bringing up Kirk s name around Featherstone. It is said past tense due to the fact he tragically died prematurely in an accident that made national headlines. Everyone, it seems, has a Mal Kirk story; usually a hilarious one they tell with a beaming smile on their faces and a glint in their eye.
He wrestled the top stars from around the globe. He even appeared in a major motion movie - a comedy, of course.
There have been a couple of good and interesting long-read articles written about his life and untimely death, but, unfortunately, even with the help of his daughter Natasha, we weren t able to unearth enough information about his sporting or personal life to be confident enough to begin the ample task of writing his biography.
Travel 25 miles west on the M62 and south just below the town of Huddersfield, and you find yourself at an even more sleepy backwater than Featherstone, in the village of Netherton, where I now live with my wife and baby son. The closed-down mining industry of Featherstone is replaced here by the closed-down textile mill industry - but at least we still have a great farm shop.
Whilst researching Mal, I had begun to follow various rugby league and wrestling history social media pages, and continued to follow them even though I had pretty much given up on the project.
I was waiting for the kettle to boil one summer afternoon and scrolled through my Twitter feed. I saw a shared picture that caught my attention. It was of an exhibit from the Imperial War Museum that displayed the image of a large man in a black-and-white photograph; he was wearing rather odd attire - white vest and leggings, with velvety-looking black pants over the top and knee-high boots, all of which was delicately embroidered with flowery patterns. His image was surrounded by dozens of trophies, championship belts, sports apparel and medals from both the spheres of sport and war. The display was beneath the text: As legends go, he was the genuine article . His name was Douglas Clark.
I never made that cup of tea as I spent the 30 minutes I had to kill in an internet wormhole, reading information on this man. During most of that time, I was attempting to work out if the man I was reading about on the plethora of different web pages could possibly be the same one - questioning how one individual could have achieved and done so much across so many differing fields in one lifetime.
I was left further astounded when I read that he had lived most of his life, and died, in a borough of Huddersfield just four miles away from the kitchen in which I stood. Eerily similar to Mal, Duggy was a coal miner, a rugby league player and a professional wrestler.
Completely by accident, I had found my story. I had found Duggy s story.
More than an amazing and unique sporting story, my research quickly began to teach me more about the man behind the legend, too. A man who, despite leaving school at just 14 to embark on a lifetime of physicality, was a deep-thinking wordsmith; a teetotaller who would do anything for his community and his family; a gentleman who could - and would - quote Shakespeare both verbally and in his writing; an anti-alpha male who would take the young or shy under his ample wings; a skilled chess player; a devout Christian; a man of poetry; a leader of men; a Man of All Talents.
Douglas Clark kept diaries, journals and also handwrote some memoirs in later life. I am pleased to say that, for the very first time (with the exception of some of his war diaries), selected excerpts from all of these carefully preserved papers are published in this story of his Extraordinary Life.
PROLOGUE
By Douglas Clark Extract from his memoirs

In the year 1891, second day of May, Douglas Clark was born in the village of Ellenborough, Cumberland. His father, John Clark, was in business as a coal merchant and carrier; a man about five foot eight and a half inches and weighing around 15-stones. He was first a man of muscle; no doubt developed by the hard occupation he followed lifting and carrying those one hundredweight (cwt) sacks of coal from house to house and filling the same with a tremendous shovel lifting one quarter cwt at a scoop.
Douglas mother was Elizabeth Clark. Although only about five foot three inches she weighed close on 14-stones and came from a hard working family. She possessed great strength and endurance after bringing up a family of nine. She used to rise at 5am and never retire until 11.30pm.
Such were the stock that Douglas sprang from, it was rather surprising that when Douglas was born he was the least of the family and a poorly child suffering from a bowel complaint. It was lucky for him that his mother was one of the best nurses, although unqualified, in the district. After Douglas had been taught to walk - twice - his mother brought him up on sherry and white of eggs, this being the only food that would stay on his stomach.
At the age of six he was quite a normal-sized boy and was on the ordinary family menu - plenty of good, plain food.
It was soon evident that Douglas had no great liking for school but preferred the woods and fields in which Ellenborough abounded. He was never happier than with his school pals Joss Jackson, Palmer, Dan and Ted. They would roam the wood together bird-nesting or wasp-nesting; just as long as they were in the sun or climbing their favourite trees together they were as happy as sun-boys. This love of the open-air life got them many a good hiding for playing in the woods ins