SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

On this day in 1963: Under soil heating was used for the first time at the Leeds Rugby League ground for their match against Dewsbury.Does anyone remember this auspicious occasion?

raveydavey wrote: On this day in 1963: Under soil heating was used for the first time at the Leeds Rugby League ground for their match against Dewsbury.Does anyone remember this auspicious occasion? No

Did they remember to turn it back off.Think of that little wheel on the meter spinning-and spinning,and spinning !!

Under soil heating-Yet another explanation for global warming.

raveydavey wrote: On this day in 1963: Under soil heating was used for the first time at the Leeds Rugby League ground for their match against Dewsbury.Does anyone remember this auspicious occasion? Yes. For the next few winters after that invariably live Saturday afternoon sport on the TV was Leeds RL

I think it's been taken out now. Certainly after the horrendous 1962/63 winter I think they thought it a good investment. I was playing Rugby League (amateur) in 62/63 and we were scheduled to play Batley Boys at Mount Pleasant Saturday 22nd December 1962, but the ground was frozen solid. We didn't play again until March. There was no soccer, rugby, racing anything between Christmas 1962 and March 1963 except, the 1st round Rugby League Challenge Cup tie between Cas and Leeds. Somehow Cas got the ground fit. I went to the game and there wasn't a blade of grass to be seen on Wheldon Road, it was a morass of black mud with occasional brown patches of sand. Lewis Jones kicked through and the Cas defence were fooled when the ball stuck in the mud and Jones collected it and scored the only try of the game. The Cas fans snowballed him! Leeds won.The Boxing Day morning clash with Wakey was a big crowdpuller at Headingley, in those days, but it seemed to be cancelled due to a frozen pitch more often than not. After the installation Leeds never had a fixture backlog, and other sides would use Headingley to clear their fixture backlog too. I think Leeds Utd also copied the idea. With summer rugby it's no longer needed.

Trojan with the "Summer" season starting in February that's not quite true. I can remember at least one and I think a second SL match which has been postponed due to snow/frozen pitch and I suspect several Northern Rail Cup games, the precursor to the other leagues' season, have suffered a similar fate.

tyke bhoy wrote: Trojan with the "Summer" season starting in February that's not quite true. I can remember at least one and I think a second SL match which has been postponed due to snow/frozen pitch and I suspect several Northern Rail Cup games, the precursor to the other leagues' season, have suffered a similar fate. That's true, presumably the Leeds board thought that with summer rugby and global warming, they didn't need the "electric blanket" any more, but looking out of the window at the moment there's not much evidence of global warming, and the worst of the weather last year co-incided with the start of the 2009 SL season. I suppose a NL club could have played NR Cup games at Headingley if the facility had still been there. As I said in my oringinal post I think they've still got it at Elland Road.

I think it is a requirement of a premiership club and given its not long since Leeds were there and have pretensions of getting back there then you are probably correct.

I used to have a sports album somewhere that had a photostory of them laying the heating. Basically a tractor, a narrow 2ft long blade and yards of black cable. Not very exciting but was billed as cutting edge technology for the time.