Former Leeds captain David Ward recalls his first meeting with legendary ex-player and coach Syd Hynes, who has died, aged 80.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00It's been a pretty hard time for the club over the last couple of years and especially this year with people, legends of this club passing by.
00:10And I'd like to thank these guys and I think we all should thank these guys for putting it all together because they've done a fabulous job.
00:17And only one club can do it right and that's the EAA Club.
00:24But on to the Sid and the coaching and the playing.
00:30The first time that I ever came in contact with Sid was my first training session in 1971.
00:40And at that time in the early 70s the club had just signed on a good bunch of juniors and there's quite a few guys in the audience today.
00:51And they all come through the system.
00:54So here we are now on my first experience here at Leeds and we were training for around about an hour, running around, pre-season training it was in them days.
01:06And we were around the stands and doing all that thing.
01:09And the coach at the time, pair yourself up, because now we're going to do the old fashioned fivers lift and piggyback and we're going to do a youngster.
01:18I'll explain it to you.
01:20You look round as a youngster, you're wet behind the looks, just keep your eyes open and your mouth shut and you're looking for a partner.
01:27Come here young'un.
01:29So obviously, yeah, Sid Hines.
01:32And he jumped straight on me back.
01:35So the idea was, the coach says, get up to the halfway line, 50, change, tri-line, change, back to the halfway line, change, have a race.
01:45All line up, on the whistle, boom, go.
01:48Get to the halfway line, that's 50, gone.
01:52I'm doing pretty well.
01:54He says, keep going young'un, it's because you're doing well.
01:58Get to the tri-line.
02:00I thought, I'm going to have a breather here.
02:02He said, Wardy, you can win this.
02:06I said, it's perfect, let's go.
02:08Turn around, you're doing well.
02:11Again, back to the halfway line, you're not going to lose it Wardy now, keep going.
02:15So that's 200 metres, we said, on me back.
02:18My first training session.
02:21But in my event days, I looked at these superstars that had just come back from Australia and had just won the Ashes.
02:27And I were in awe of them.