IT was worth the wait as Dukinfield Rugby Union Club belatedly celebrated its 140th birthday.
Though there was a two-year delay because of Covid-19, the back tie dinner at Dukinfield Town Hall coincided with a record-breaking season.
Dukinfield’s first team landed two pieces of silverware after winning the ADM Division One title and the Cheshire Plate – it is thought the club has never previously completed the league and cup double.
And when pre-season training resumes on July 12, Dukinfield will be preparing for life in the loftier ADM Championship.
Founded in 1880 by members of the cricket club to offer alternative sport during the winter months, Dukinfield joined the newly formed Cheshire Rugby Football Union.
The club expanded and often attracted four-figure crowds when playing leading union, league and forces teams such as Wakefield, Halifax and Oldham.
The club closed during the First World War and, after reopening in 1923, had several international players including Dr K P Hendrie who represented Scotland and was in the 1924 British Lions tour of South Africa.
The club was dealt a severe blow in 1969 when vandals burned down the clubhouse destroying all the club’s records and memorabilia and leaving it homeless.
Undeterred, the members raised money to buy the Co-op building which fronted Blocksages and built an extension in 1989 to double its capacity creating a function room and new changing rooms. The old butcher’s tiles are still on display in the home changing room.
The club struggled through the seventies, but real progress only began from the 1980s.
From humble beginnings in the lowest level of the RFU league structure, the club gradually moved up the leagues by the late 1990s and early noughties, winning three titles in five years while coached by former Great Britain rugby league international Mike Ford whose influence remains to this day in some aspects of senior rugby.
Today the club, which is overseen by a dedicated team of committee members, is on a sound financial footing, the catalyst being a refurbishment of the clubhouse in readiness for the 2015 Rugby World Cup. They have even bought their own minibus.
On the field, the club has the Dinky Duks for children aged between two and six years, five junior sides up to Under-15s and a buoyant senior set up with two teams.
Head coach Neil Hayden said: “We have had a gradual progression over the past two and a half years in what has been my coaching tenure at the club. This year has been a fabulous year for the first team winning ADM Division One by a comfortable 17 points and losing only two of our 21 league games.
“We also won the Cheshire Plate comfortably beating Oxton Parkonians 59-0 in the final at Wirral RUFC 59-0.”