Harrogate Rugby

A tribute to Wayne is on the Letchworth RFC website.

Wayne’s funeral will take place on Monday 23rd July 2012 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Harrogate RUFC sent a club rugby shirt for one of the pall bearers to wear at the funeral.

Wayne, who went on to become one of Letchworth Rugby Club's most noted centres, grew up in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and joined Letchworth Rugby Club as a graduate from Derby University with a BSc in Geography specialising in mapping. He was married to Rachel, and they have three children, Emily, Jessica and James. Wayne was a member of the victorious Harrogate Colts team which won the Colts Yorkshire Cup in 1987, played at Scarborough. The Harrogate Colts defeated Redcar 21 - 18 after beating Rotherham, Morley and Roundhay earlier in the competition. This was the only occasion when Harrogate’s under 19 team won this coveted trophy.

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Wayne was one of our team of ‘87’ the only Harrogate team to win the Yorkshire Colts Trophy. During our time in the Colts we spent many a day and night, training, drinking and chasing girls. Wayne was, as we all were back then, ‘One of the lads’ and we enjoyed each other’s company as well as lots of success on the rugby field. Un-originally Wayne was nicknamed ‘John’ due to fracturing his coccyx in a poorly timed tackle and spending the next few weeks walking like John Wayne the famous cowboy actor.

On the field Wayne was a very enthusiastic, tough running, hard tackling winger, who trained hard, never missed a training session and was always willing to play in any position. All in all Wayne was a real team player who really enjoyed the game of rugby union and always aimed to be one of the fittest lads in the team. Unfortunately, we lost contact with Wayne when he left Harrogate, unlike a lot of the team who are still here. In fact we tried desperately to contact him earlier this year for our 25th colts cup reunion where most of the team was able to get back together. During the long, beer drinking, nostalgic day our thoughts turned to those who could not make the reunion and we raised a glass to those who were not there.

Our thoughts are with Wayne’s family and all his friends at Letchworth Garden City RUFC at this sad time but we are sure everyone who knew him will have many fond memories of Wayne to celebrate, as we have, and we will remember him, especially at our reunions in the future. Below is a photograph of our cup winning side of ‘87’. John (Wayne) is the third from the left on the back row. For your information a few hours after this photo was taken the whole team stood naked in a bar singing and drinking to our success!


Simon Clarke (Capt), David Wheat, Steve Jefferies, Simon Holgate, Shaun Ledger, Bill Freeman, David Croft, Simon Brown, Pascal Mitchell, David Masey, Steve Isac, David Adamson, Richard Eggleston, Chris Head, Chris Gair, David Batty, Phil Owen, Andrew Cauldwell, Alex Pride, .
David Wheat.



Back row left to right: Bill Freeman, Steve Jeffries, Wayne Marsh, Shaun Ledger, David Croft, Simon ‘Bomber’ Brown, Dave Massey, Richard Eggleston, Pascal Mitchell, Dave Adamson, Steve Isaac. Front row left to right: Alex Pride, Chris Head, Chris Gair, Simon Holgate, Simon Clarke, David Batty, Phil Owen, David Wheat, Andy Caldwell. Seated: Dave Brown (Manager/Coach), Tim Diggle (Manager/Coach).