The date is July the 17th, 2005, I am ten years old, and at Blackpool’s Bloomfield Road to watch the Northern Rail Cup, which my beloved Hull Kr are featuring in, playing Castleford Tigers in front of 9,400 people (according to rugbyleagueproject.org). The previous year had seen Rovers fall at the final hurdle, losing 42-14 to Leigh Centurions (as the Leopards were then known), I had been there that day, too, and tasted the bitter disappointment of a loss on the (what seemed to be) big stage.

The game was a close one. The Tigers took a 10-2 lead into halftime and Rovers were fearing the worst again. The game seemed to be heading to the wire, and was crying out for a hero. Enter Byron Ford. Ford, who joined the Robins that season and would play at Craven Park until 2007, intercepted a wayward Castleford pass well into Rovers half and raced down the pitch to score what would be the winning try. I was reminded of this moment whilst watching the 2025 Super League Grand Final back the day after the victory was sealed to hand Hull KR their third major honour of 2025. Granted, Joe Burgess’ final interception try wasn’t as long-range as Byron Ford’s, but the symmetry of the two moments stood out to me. Two enigmatic wingers sealing the win for Rovers in finals, twenty years apart on vastly different stages. One representing a team in the process of becoming challengers for promotion for Super League, and the other representing the finished product of what the club would become after twenty years of ups-and-downs: Super League champions.

I’ve said it a few times in different posts that the Hull KR I grew up watching were far, far, away from the polished outfit you see play nowadays. We were just as likely to fly to the moon as play in a Super League Grand Final. If you find Craven Park disagreeable now, I assure you it is much improved from the early 2000s. Where the lauded Craven Streat now is stood a dilapidated away stand, which was practically situated in the North Sea it was that far away from the pitch, and which frequently stood empty. There was no North Stand, but there was a speedway track, and a greyhound track to complement the pitch which more resembled a plowed field. As for a crowd, forget it, me and my old friend Anthony used to pass a ball around in the East Stand, with no fear of hitting anyone, chiefly because there was no bugger there!

It astounds me now to hear Craven Park heaving for each game. Often, there’s not a ticket to be had to get into Craven Park. There’s even a waiting list for season tickets! I can’t imagine there was much of a waiting list in 2004, but there is now. So much so that, for the second season running, the club had to draft in a temporary South stand for the last few home games, alongside another temporary addition – an East stand extension – has seen the Robins pack 12,000 into Craven Park for a few games! 12,000! It may not seem like much for fans of teams like Wigan or Leeds, who’ve grown accustomed to drawing such large crowds, but it’s a culture shock for fans of my vintage, whose prevailing memories of watching their early games include a mostly-empty stadium.

I’ve heard the criticism from other fans about our sudden influx of fans over the past five years, and yes, I understand that sentiment, but I can’t begrudge anyone who comes on board at any point. It’s not my job to gate-keep my team, and if we’re now producing a product on the field that is getting people through the turnstiles then great! The more the merrier! Those people now piling into Craven Park might be bringing children, or younger siblings, therefore introducing a new generation to the club, and that’s the lifeblood of a fanbase.

This season was special before that fateful night at Old Trafford, of course. Many fans would have happily taken just the Challenge Cup win from this season, having waited so long for some silverware, we weren’t going to get greedy; except we were. Willie Peters has made no secret of his ambition, and when the long-anticipated slump after Wembley didn’t immediately materialise, we started to believe that we were actually in with a shout of taking, if not the lot, then at least the League Leaders’ Shield. That would be enough, right? Wrong. Once you’ve done the double, the onus is on you to then go out and get the one prize left. No-one wants to be remembered as the team that won “most” of the trophies, do they?

Here’s my confession: I wasn’t confident that we would win the Grand Final at first. After watching the team limp home with the LLS in hand against Warrington (in a bar in Bulgaria, damn my poor holiday planning), you could be forgiven for thinking that the team looked spent. Worn out after an all-out season where they only had one, solitary, week off in July. Luckily for them, their second week off of the season came before their semi-final, and it seemed to do just the trick, as they dispatched St Helens at Craven Park. Then the new doubts kicked in.

My point here is: I could have never anticipated back in 2005, or even as recently as 2022, that we would be in the position we are now. Saturday night was a magical evening. One that makes slogging it through the lower leagues following Rovers as a lad all the sweeter, knowing where we came from and how they got to where they are. From the the edge of oblivion, to the undisputed kings of rugby league in Britain. Who’d’ve thunk it?

It’s taken me a while to actually finish this piece. I got distracted by Ashes content, and other things came up, and suddenly this seemed a little bit too sentimental, even for me. However, I decided to come back to it after I did some thinking this past week and realised that Hull KR might have just saved my life this past year. If that’s a bit dramatic then it’s fair to say that it has been one of the few things that has made me want to get out of bed in the last six months.

It’s not very often I talk about my personal life on this website. It’s not what you come here for and this site is an escape for me from things that go on in “real life” but I feel like context is needed in order to clarify the statements made at the end of the previous paragraph. You see, in April/May of this year, my marriage came to an end. An entirely amiable conclusion, my ex-husband and I still are still friends, but a heart-wrenching and difficult conclusion nonetheless. My life turned on its head in the span of a few days, and as someone who has had mental health issues throughout their formative years and well into adulthood, I did, and still do, struggle to adapt to life outside of that relationship.

The reason I’m saying all of this in a piece about my rugby team is, Hull KR has been the one most consistent source of joy to me throughout the past six months, and there have been some dark times in those months, I assure you. We actually made the decision to separate the day before Rovers’ Challenge Cup semi-final against Catalans Dragons in York. I went to that game. I needed that game, and the catharsis of the victory served as a beacon of joy in what had been the most devastating forty-eight hours of my life. It gave me purpose to carry on getting up, because I needed to see them at Wembley, and I did, we won, and I cried. Tears of joy, for the triumph of finally putting those ‘since 1985’ jibes to rest once and for all, and tears of sadness too, for all I had lost up to that point.

It’s not just the on-field successes of the first team that has dragged me from the doldrums I found myself in for the majority of this year. It was also my teammates at the Hull KR Foundation PDRL team, whose support on and off the pitch have brightened my life so much this season. It gave me meaning to have to go to training, and it brought untold joy to share a pitch with a team of guys and girls who lifted me up when I was down, all while wearing the badge of the team I have loved for twenty-plus years. I love my team, I’m proud to play with them, and I’ll always be thankful for everything they’ve given me.

Finally, I got to share these precious memories with my dad, who has been my constant companion on terraces up and down the country. Someone who had seen the Robins win it all, and said he never thought he’d see it in his lifetime again. Well we saw it together. It might have taken them forty years, but they got back to the mountain top, and no one will ever take those experiences and memories from us. We’ve shared the good, bad, and ugly of watching Hull KR, and have been rewarded handsomely for our steadfast love of our club. Not just with the trophies, but the moments that came along the way. For as a great Robin once said: “memories are better than dreams”.

Written by Nathan Major (Site editor & Hull KR fan)