1991/’92 Season Summary

Captain: Julian Heath

Record:  P35  W22  D0  L13

The 1991/’92 campaign started in a fashion that belied the emotional roller coaster of a season that it was to become.

Newly promoted to London Division Two North we won seven out of ten friendlies and three Essex Cup ties prior to the first league game of the season. However, following defeats to Tabard and Barking in our first two league fixtures we had by now lost four of our last six matches and our coach, Don Harrigan, had parted company with the club.

In urgent need of a coaching staff familiar with our style of play and abilities the club appointed former coaches Ray Harris and Marcus Russell with further valuable assistance from Paul Clague and Paul Jenkinson.

However, we were finding the new league tougher than expected and a further three defeats to Bishop’s Stortford, Norwich and Chingford followed. By the end of the year we had played five, lost five and were rock bottom of the league. We did though have an Essex Cup semi final against Southend who played two leagues above us to look forward to.

With only five league games left to play we knew we had to win at least four of the remaining fixtures to stand a chance of beating the drop. A tall order but one which had been boosted by the return of a key player, David Hurley from Saracens (apparently they favoured some Aussie bloke called Lynagh, but their loss was our gain). To partner him in the first of these games away to Woodford we selected veteran Martin Polkinghorne at Scrum Half for the experience he could bring to the team. With tries from Oastler and Bailey we scraped a 13-7 win to put us on our way.

The following week we lost 23-13 to Southend in the semi final in what was a bad tempered match. However, in the weeks that followed we beat Ipswich and Finchley in the league and travelled to Letchworth knowing that a victory would leave us safe. By now we had added further experience to the team, in the shape of Ray Ball a former captain I had played under and had the utmost respect for. I’m sure he and Martin found it very hard but they continued to put their bodies on the line.  

Needless to say it was a tight affair and at half time we led 6-4. The second half was spent entirely in our half, but in one of the best defensive displays I can recall as a Harlow player we didn’t concede a penalty in kickable range. The half remained scoreless and finally we were safe. For me the abiding memory was one of pure relief at the release of pressure that had built up over the season. I cried like a baby!

We duly won our last league game against Old Merchant Taylor’s and finished a respectable mid table having won as many as we had lost.

To the coaching staff and players who stuck together and saw it through…thank you.

Julian Heath

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