The Golden Age 1903-1914

By Alan West

The twelve seasons before the First World War were completely dominated by Whalley, with seven championships to add to the two won before the crisis year of 1902. They were never lower than 3rd throughout the period.

With differences patched up, the league was back to eleven members for season 1903 and never looked back. Whalley, Clitheroe and Barnoldswick returned after 1902 and were joined by founder members Barrow, former members Earby and Settle and a new club in Sabden.

Earby and Settle celebrated their return to the league in the first match of the season in dramatic fashion. The Craven Herald of Friday, 17 April, 1903 reported under "Settle News":

"Despite the inclemency of the weather the members of the cricket club have commenced practice for the forthcoming year. It is to be hoped that now the team are again competing for the Ribblesdale League Cup renewed interest will be taken in the club's doings. "

Whether it was the damp wicket or good bowling is not recorded but Earby in reply to Settle's 77 all out (Swale 25) were all out for 3, still the league's lowest total and one which Earby are constantly reminded of by the photograph of the scoreboard hanging in the Settle tearoom. Swale and Grisedale each took 5‑1 but what the extra was is not recorded. At the risk of depressing Earby even further, the Earby innings details are as follows:

EARBY

Despite the poor start, though, Earby finished runners up to Whalley who began their sequence of championships finishing five points clear of Earby.

The league handbooks say that Whalley professional Jack Usher and W. Lakeland bowled unchanged throughout the season except for three overs sent down by J. Pye and that Jack Usher took a record 123 wickets. Unfortunately neither feat is accurately recorded. Langshaw had three spells, taking 12 wickets in about 30 overs and Usher's 123 wickets Included 28 taken in friendlies. Nevertheless the sequence of bowling performances is worth recording.

Lakeland was to become Ribblesdale Wanderers' first professional when they joined the league in 1907. Arthur Langshaw was to go on to be a well respected Clitheroe headmaster, local historian and pageant writer, magistrate, Freeman of the Borough and all‑round sportsman who helped to establish Clitheroe Golf Club and achieved a billiard break of 283. Roger Green and his men were feted with yet another torchlight procession through the village and J.R. Thompson was rewarded for 17 years work as variously secretary and captain with a massive silver cup, a luncheon basket and a motor car clock.

1904 saw the most incredible finish in the 100 years' history of the league. With one match left Great Harwood were one point clear of Whalley and Clitheroe. Whalley beat Great Harwood in a low scoring match ‑ Whalley 84, Great Harwood 53 (Usher 7‑29) ‑ with a record gate of £35. As Clitheroe had beaten Padiham, they finished top equal with Whalley, the old enemy, and a play‑off was arranged at Cliffe Park, Great Harwood on Saturday, 17th September. £50 was taken at the gate and special trains were laid on for the trip from Clitheroe to Great Harwood. History records that the match was tied and the championship for the first time shared but the real result will never be known. Whalley batted first and made only 72 all out, T.D. Bourn the veteran left‑arm slow bowler in his 21st year as a Clitheroe player taking 7‑33. It looked all over when Clitheroe were 38‑9 but Rawsthorne with a runner made 16 and the number 11 Jerry Jackson of Low Moor made 13, an innings which was the basis of his obituary years later. Roger Green, the Whalley captain, introduced Lakeland into the attack for what proved to be the last over. Five runs were conceded in three balls then with one run to get to level the scores according to the scoreboard, the valiant last wicket stand ended, Lakeland bowling Jackson. Jack Usher finished with 6‑38. But then the disputes started. The Clitheroe scorer pointed out that a bye to the boundary had only been counted as two runs when it should have been four. The umpires allowed this change, making Clitheroe the winners but "on the score books being compared it was alleged that the Castleites had only scored 70 when the last wicket fell so that the result was a tie. The Whalley partisans however protested that a ball for which four had been given had not reached the boundary and on this ground claimed to have won the match. During the evening the feverish excitement abated and with milder passions the two captains agreed that the match and the championship should be 'honours divided'." A second play‑off was suggested but turned down on principle by Whalley although eventually in order to clear the air a little Whalley offered to play Clitheroe again, the losing side to pay £30 to Blackburn Infirmary. In the event, the Championship was left shared.

Jack 0sher was to leave Whalley at the end of the 1904 season to play with Crompton but in August 1905 came sad news of his early death at the age of 46. A Yorkshireman who played one first‑class match for his county, Usher joined Whalley in 1895 and immediately took them to their first championship with 96 wickets and 261 runs. Records for 1896 and 1897 are difficult to establish but his bowling average for 1897 is recorded at the Whalley AGM as 7.62 (compared with 7.55 in 1895) so one can presume that it was about the 90 wicket mark. His bowling average in 1898 was even better, 81 wickets at 7.0. He had 80 wickets in 1899, 95 as we have seen in 1903 (123 overall) and it was fitting that he should see Whalley to their famous play‑off tie in 1904, with 6 wickets which took his seasons tally to 112.

Alongside Usher in this golden late Victorian and Edwardian area the outstanding bowler was the other commanding figure of the 1904 play‑off tie, T.P. (Tom) Bourn. His sequence of figures for the 1904 season is even more impressive than Jack Usher's of the year before.

Read Earby Burnley St. A. Barnoldswick Barrow Padiham Earby Gt. Harwood Whalley Burnley St. A.

Total 121 Average 5.2

In the same season without benefit of a playoff J. Cross Great Harwood had 120 wickets at 6.31. Only because I cannot trace the full details do I leave out his sequence of figures. And the best bowling in a single innings was by W. Nutter of Barrow who reduced Sabden from 76‑1 to 99 all out with 9 wickets for 6 in 5.5 overs including the hat trick. Truly a vintage season 1904 and the Ribblesdale League was in good health.

Whalley could only come second in 1905 with a new professional Calvert from Lytham and Settle took their second title. But the title came back to Whalley in 1906, thanks largely to Jerry Ellis the new professional who took 73 wickets with his left‑arm medium pace and topped 300 runs. At 40 he was a veteran who had been professional at Read as a 19 year old in 1885 before the League was founded, then at Bolton and Ramsbottom and had taken 8‑22 for Lancashire v Leicestershire as a young man. Remarkably he was to have 19 more seasons at Blackpool, East Lancashire and finally Barrow as an amateur from 1921‑5 when they achieved their only Ribblesdale League Championship. More of his son Stan's exploits for Barrow later! Another newcomer for Whalley was a man whose name was to become synonymous with the club and a distinguished figure at Old Trafford ‑ Leonard Green. In August he began with the splendid figures in his first match of 5‑14 and 63. And perhaps most important of all, another son of Whalley, John Hargreaves Ramsbottom, took over from Mr. Hurst of Burnley as President of the League, a post he was to fill with distinction for 50 years.

The make‑up of the league continued to vary year by year. The eleven teams who played in 1903 and 1904 after the crisis were reduced to nine again in 1905 when Barrow and Earby temporarily withdrew. Earby came back in place of Barnoldswick in 1906 but 1907 saw the number back to ten with the entry of Ribblesdale Wanderers, and Barrow's return in 1908 from the N.E. Lancashire League made it eleven again.

Travel was still a problem for a league so geographically spread. An account by Councillor Standring, the Chairman of Ribblesdale Wanderers in its early years, of the last two matches of their 1910 season gives some idea of the problems.

"The 18‑mile journey to Earby was made by waggonette and three horses. All went well on the outward journey and after playing our match and having tea we gave instructions to the driver that we were ready for returning. He politely told us that we should have to wait, as one of his horses was ill. And wait we did until nearly midnight when he said he would have a try but "the horse may drop dead before we have gone far". Anyway we got going quietly and with walking and riding a bit we arrived home on Sunday morning about 4 a.m. and thankful for it. The following Saturday "no horses for Settle" was the message to the committee. So we hired a motor chara and went in fine style, almost upsetting a doctor in his private car. The match finished, we had tea and a stroll on the Castlebergh and decided to return at 9.15. All went well until we arrived at Gisburn, when a dense fog set in. We waited a time to see if any improvement was likely. But we had to go and on reaching the flat about 1.5 miles out of Gisburn down into a ditch we went. All were alarmed but nobody any worse. We tried to give a push to extricate it, but it was no use. We had to send a message by a passing car for another chara which did not arrive until 5 o'clock and it was just 6 o'clock when we arrived home on the Sunday morning, everybody thankful that the season had ended."

Clitheroe were champions in 1907 with 84 wickets from the evergreen T.D. Bourn. The outstanding feat of the season came in the very first match when Amos Hindle back at Whalley polished off Sabden with 8 wickets for 7 runs in 7.4 overs, finishing with a hat trick.

Padiham took their first title in 1908 with 100 wickets for Sam Moss, always regarded as the most fearsome fast bowler of the early years. It included 10‑19 against Great Harwood (all bowled) and 9‑9 against Read (8 bowled, I lbw).

Whalley were back in charge in 1909 (Just ahead of Read) with Jerry Ellis's replacement as professional Yorkshireman Fred Ward taking 76 wickets. He began his benefit match against Great Harwood with four wickets in the first over including a hat trick and a further wicket in his second, leaving him with 2‑2‑0‑5. Darwen Etrurians were back in the league to make it twelve strong for the first time and finished a creditable seventh equal though they were all out for 10 against the champions, Ward taking 9‑5 including a hat trick.

The league was still conscious of its lack of publicity. At the AGM in 1908 there was a proposal to change the name of the league to the Lancashire Combination which was rejected. At the next AGM Mr. Hudson of Padiham raised the old issue of' a merger with the Lancashire League, proposing that a letter should be sent to them asking them to take the Ribblesdale League as a second division. His reasons were that interest in the league was waning and decreasing every year. But the proposal could find no seconder. Another proposal from Sabden supported by Earby, Settle and Barrow was that professionals should no longer be engaged but the thought of continuing to compete with the Lancashire League brought a 5‑4 defeat for the motion.

Whalley did it again in 1910 when Settle the eventual runners‑up lost the last match to Read and completed the first hat trick of championships in 1911 with a new professional Jack Sampson. The illuminated address, presented by the league for this first ever hat trick still hangs proudly in the Whalley pavilion.

In 1912 Burnley St. Andrews won the last of their four championships with Padiham coming second. Padiham also won the first season of the newly‑formed Junior League which brought the Ribblesdale League 2nd XIs out of the N.E. Lancashire Amateur League and forced its disbandment, a move which had been mooted a year earlier but rejected then.

Whalley were back at the top in 1913. The league was by now down to ten members. Sabden had withdrawn at the end of the 1911 season after nine seasons in the league and Earby withdrew a year later not to return until the great schism of 1952 when the Northern League was founded. Gill took 7‑6 in Clitheroe's total of 18 against Great Harwood and T.D. Bourn still going strong at Clitheroe took 7‑9 against Darwen, who incidentally had dropped the Etrurians from their title at the AGM of 1910.

Despite the untimely death of their captain C.A.L. Swale, who had been League President in 1898, Settle were champions in the shortened season of 1914 when war intervened in August and prevented any further cricket until 1919.