T'Other Side: Batley Bulldogs

 

FIRST TEAM SQUAD

LAST TIME OUT

2021 MATCHES

Coach: Craig Lingard

 

Craig Lingard’s took over as head coach of Batley at the start of 2020 following on from Matt Diskin who had moved to take over in charge of Oldham. Craig has previously been head coach at Keighley from 2017 to May 2019 and he started his career at Bramley Buffaloes where he was head coach in 2012.

Before taking over as coach he was the head of Batley’s community team and his entire playing career (1998-2008), mostly as a fullback, was at Batley. In total he played 205 games and scored 142 tries which remains as Batley’s all-time career try scoring record.

He was so highly regarded by the club that the terrace opposite the ground entrance was named ‘The Craig Lingard Terrace’.

 

 

 

Captain: James Brown

 

James Brown is now the Batley captain, succeeding Shaun Lunt who retired at the end of 2020.

He made his début with Swinton in 2013 and then joined Batley in 2015 where he has remained ever since although he did play one game for Keighley on dual reg in 2017.

He usually plays at prop or loose forward.

 

 

Star Man: Luke Hooley

 

Luke Hooley is Batley’s regular fullback although he did play one game this year at scrumhalf, deputising for Tom Gilmore.

He was in the Wakefield Trinity academy but never got to play in the first team but had loan or dual reg spells at Oldham (2017-2019) and Dewsbury (2017 and 2019).

He joined Batley in 2020. So far this year he has scored 7 tries and kicked 23 goals.

 

 

Loan players

In early July three young Leeds players (Oli Burton, Levi Edwards and Oli Burton) joined Batley on loan. We suspect that Burton and Field have returned to Leeds but Edwards (a centre) played for Batley last week and has scored 4 tries in 4 games.

 

 

The Fev connection

 

There is a long history of players who have played for both Batley and Fev. In our database of all Fev players since 1921 there are 92 that we know also played for Batley and there will almost certainly be others who we haven’t discovered so far.

Amongst the pre ‘Summer Era’ players are Benny Lingard who made wartime guest appearances for Batley, Carl Dooler who played his last season before retiring at Batley and Jeff Grayshon who also finished his playing career there at the age of 45 and coached them for two seasons.

 

 

Nyle Flynn, who is in the Batley 2021 squad, is the son of Adrian Flynn who played for Fev in 2003.