Sculthorpe by Paul Sculthorpe

Author:Paul Sculthorpe [Paul Sculthorpe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409036821
Publisher: Random House

12

Dan and Dusted

Around 4.30 p.m. on 15 May 2004 I should have been celebrating the happiest moment of my career, the fulfilment of a lifetime's ambition, first dreamt on the windswept playing fields round the back of my mum and dad's house in Royton.

Instead all I could think of was my brother Danny slumped on his backside, tears pouring down his face – and all because of what my team had done to him.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have swapped winning the Challenge Cup for anything. Well, nothing in sport, anyway. How many great players have never even reached the final, let alone led their side on to the stage to receive the trophy? And I wasn't just picking up a winners' medal, I was the man collecting the most famous cup in rugby league.

But there were other things to attend to before I could think about raising the most famous trophy in rugby league to the thousands of St Helens fans who had no idea of the inner torment I was going through at that moment.

It's funny how many things race through your mind when the hooter goes for full time. Delight, obviously, is the first, quickly followed by relief at mission accomplished. But then so many other things flood into your head – in my case my wife, Lindsay, and son Jake (we've since had a little girl, Lucy-Jo).

And if I was going through hell at what I'd done to our Danny, it was even worse for Mum and Dad, Linda and Doug, sitting in the stands at Cardiff while everyone around them was going mad.

It's funny when I look back on that match now, because the first thing that still comes to mind is the sight of how upset Danny was. I remember trying to pick him up off the turf and cheer him up a little – but having been in that position myself, when Wigan beat us at Murrayfield, I know there's not really much anyone can say when you've lost a final.

We'd been together from the first time either of us first picked up a rugby ball – in fact he got me a bollocking off my dad because I wanted to play football at the time! – and had just become the first brothers to play on opposing sides in the Challenge Cup final.

But fair play to him, he texted me as soon as he got his head together and basically ordered me to have a good night. That took some doing because he was going through hell himself. To be honest, though, I wouldn't expect anything else from him because we're very close, even though he tries to knock my bloody head off every time we play each other!

Mum and Dad had actually told the pair of us that they planned to have a quiet night out in Cardiff – if that's possible after a rugby final – because they were in an awful position when it came to what to do.

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