Skip to content

Blog

Cooling showers, apricots and gillyflowers…

“Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots and gillyflowers.”
Sara Coleridge

17 tracks to build up a sweat, with Róisín Murphy, Ben Saviour, Behind the Border, Paris Texas, Andrew Bird, Big Thief, Blur, Spencer, MJ Lenderman and more.

Midweek madness…

“If all our national holidays were observed on Wednesdays, we could wind up with nine-day weekends.”  – George Carlin

Transcending reality, we fall apart sideways…

A sonic collage that transcends genres and embraces Dream Wife, Do Nothing, Bdrmm, Grian Chatten, Olivia Dean, Brigid Mae Power, The Japanese House, David James Bianchi, John Thomas, Lipphead, Erdi Irmak, John Carroll Kirby, Dome and Dome, KLBSQ1N, Milow, and Akin.

Appreciating the sun…

Superhumans walk among the flowers, appreciating the sun, out there all the waking hours, who’s to say we’re wrong? A mixed bag of tunes, including tracks by FIZZ, Bishop Briggs, Arthur Russell, Coi Leray, Ian Otta, M. Ward, Monoed, Tim French, Save The Robots and more.

Extremely loud and incredibly close…

“He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.” Jonathan Safran Foer – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

A mixed bag of tunes that probably have very little to do with Father’s Day – but I’d like to see the old man sat in the garden, turning his nose up at all of these due to the lack of Glenn Miller and Acker Bilk, while having his annual bottle of Mackeson stout. Includes tracks by Django Django, Bruno Major, Coach Party, Goat, Gustavo Mota, Hand Habits, Marc Mosca, Meshell Ndegeocello, Minimal Schlager, Porij, Paul Baule, Sparklehorse and more (you might notice I’ve been watching The Gallows Pole).

Curtain call for RL great Clive…

I wrote the following for the May issue of Forty20 magazine and it was reprinted in the programme for Sully.

The first time I saw Clive Sullivan on the wing was at Hull FC’s home the Boulevard.

Unfortunately, it was 1977, Hull FC having been promoted to the First Division as Second Division champions in the 1976-77 season, and Sully was playing in the wrong colours – the red and white of east of the city rivals Hull Kingston Rovers.

1976 was the first year I’d been dragged by a friend of mine to a game of rugby league. We only lived a ten minute walk away from the Boulevard and, for two 10 year olds, the close proximity of the Airlie Street gates was a deciding factor in following the team in the black and white irregular hoops. We got lucky that season, finding ourselves following a team of winners.

This might all be a convenient false memory but, as I stood in the Airlie Birds’ Threepenny Stand, Sully got some comedic jibes thrown his way. Even as young lads we were aware of his legendary status at our club. He laughed off whatever was said to him with a brilliant smile and, for a good few seconds, smiled directly at me and, in that dream-like moment, time briefly stopped. Then, with Rovers in possession, Sully took a pass from a play the ball and went flying up the wing like a gazelle. I’d never seen anyone move that fast.

Sully kept cropping up in the same manner in the Hull Derby until he left Rovers in 1980 (heading first to Oldham, then back to the Boulevard to play until 1982). We were happy to see him exit the pitch at the 1979-1980 BBC Floodlit Trophy on the wrong side of FC’s 13-3 victory then had our hearts broken at Wembley in the same season in the all-Hull Challenge Cup, Rovers running out 10-5 winners with years of “you’ll never win at Wembley” chants to follow.

I didn’t see it at the time but there’s a great Grandstand pre-match interview with Sully that apparently only took place because Len Casey (who’d also made the switch from FC to Rovers) was on the toilet. Tony Gubba asks Sully how many of his 300+ tries have been scored for the opposition. To which Sully responds, with a grin, “Today I’m playing for Hull Kingston Rovers and I want to score three tries for them.” He didn’t – it was Steve Hubbard’s kicking game that stuck the boot in.

Whether red and white or black and white, there’s no disagreement across the city of Hull – Sully was a magnificent player for both clubs. He played a total of 352 games for Hull, scoring 250 tries, and 118 tries for the Robins in 213 games. He continues to be revered on both sides of the River Hull.

Clive Sullivan’s international career was equally successful, playing 47 times for Wales and Great Britain. In the 1972 World Cup, when he became the first black captain of any British national team, he scored a try in each of GB’s games. He was lifted aloft by his teammates with the trophy in his hands thanks, in no small part, to his 75 yard charge down the pitch to score against Australia in the final. The game ended 10-10, with GB taking the honours having topped the table. As one of the greatest players in the sport’s history, Sully was rightly inducted into the Rugby League Hall of Fame in 2022.

When Sully died in 1985, at the age of 42, there was a palpable sense of grief right across Hull and beyond. His memory abides, as it should. Traffic heads from the M62 westwards into the city on the Clive Sullivan Way, serving as a constant reminder of his name, although the traffic often moves somewhat slower than Sully did on the wing.

The 10-year-old who stood in the Threepenny wouldn’t have expected the older version of himself to end up working in theatre. But… In 2005 I was invited to a meeting to suggest some ideas to Hull Truck Theatre following the local success of a play I’d written about the 1980 Challenge Cup. They were keen to commission me to write something else and I had loads of half-baked nonsense in a notebook, none of it sports-related.

The night before the meeting I had an incredibly lucid dream. That moment when Clive Sullivan smiled directly at me replayed. We had a lovely chat and then a huge poster unfolded with Sully, and I know this sounds naff, in a half-and-half kit. The poster was suspended over the theatre. I mentioned this at the end of the meeting and, well, that was that and the play Sully was commissioned.

Back in 2005 the internet was not the first port of call for research. Luckily I was working at the local newspaper, so had access to archive material. But with no plot and only a sketchy level of knowledge about Sully off the pitch, there was a need to talk to a few people with more knowledge and personal experiences of the man than me.

The brilliantly named Hull Daily Mail sports reporter Dick Tingle was not only a font of wisdom that he was eager to share but gave me an out-of-print Sullivan biography by Joe Latus called Hard Road To The Top that proved invaluable. Dick also put me in touch with those that played alongside Sully, club historians and archivists, including FC’s Bill Dalton and, more importantly, Clive’s wife Ros.

Ros, who would have been within her rights to tell me where to go when I turned up on her doorstep, was incredibly generous with her time and her anecdotes. Talking to Ros also led to conversations with the couple’s children – athlete Lisa and former Rovers, St Helens and dual-code international player Anthony. My notebook quickly brimmed with beautiful stories.

The play was, and remains, a gift. Sully’s is remarkable story, made even more remarkable by the fact that, when he was a schoolboy, he was told he would never walk again following a leg injury, never mind have a career in sport. As a Para given dispensation for leave from his Army duties to play for Hull FC, a serious crash on the way back to barracks from a game saw him suffer multiple broken bones, a punctured lung and a near-death experience. What followed is, of course, Rugby League history. The stuff that dreams are made of.

First performed in 2006, it is fitting that Mosaic Productions are reviving Sully in what would have been Clive Sullivan’s 80th year on the planet. Directed by Scott Solway, it is a great way to celebrate Sully’s induction into the Hall of Fame and continue to remind ourselves of this player’s sporting prowess and legendary status.

Postscript:

Sully was performed at Hull Truck Theatre on June 6-10, 2023.

Author James Oddy interviewed me when he was researching True Professional: The Clive Sullivan Story. It is an excellent biography that I heartily recommend. You can order the book below at my virtual shop on bookshop.org

Hot fun in the summertime…

It’s getting hot out there so here are some sweaty tunes to rub in your Factor 50 to, with tracks from Keg, This Is The Kit, Squid, Youth Lagoon, Ghost of Vroom, feeble little horse, BT, Paul Baule and more.

The future is real. The past is all made up…

As Logan Roy said, “The future is real. The past is all made up. Meeting over. F**k off.” A mixed bag of tunes including Nicholas Britell’s strings and 808 version of the Succession theme, Neutral Milk Hotel, Loyle Carner, new tracks from Dominik Eulberg, Bully, McKinley Dixon, Aisha Badru, W.I.T.C.H., Jaun Wauters and more.

Next week: Sully…

Mosaic Productions’ Sully, starring Levi Payne as Sully, Peter McMillan as Max and Amy Thompson as Chelle, is on next week at Hull Truck Theatre (June 6-10, with matinees on the Thursday and Saturday).

Sully tells the story of the late great Clive Sullivan MBE, a very proud Welshman who became a son of Hull on both sides of the river. 

Sully represented both Hull FC and Hull Kingston Rovers with pride, dignity and honour, scoring over 100 try’s for both clubs whilst also winning a Challenge Cup Final Winners Medal in the red and white and black and white. Sully also became the first black captain to represent his country in any sport, and go on to win the Rugby League World Cup in 1972… and all this through much adversity in his younger years. 

Sully sadly passed away at the tender age of just 42 in 1985. 

Clive Sullivan MBE would have been 80 years old in April 2023, he has just been inducted into the Rugby League Hall Of Fame, and “The Sully Ball” was used at the recent Rugby League World Cup in tribute to the great man.

SULLY is written by local Hull playwright Dave Windass and directed by Scott Solway.

Come and see for yourself the remarkable story of one of Hull’s most famous sons, and all he achieved, wear your black and white, wear your red and white, and see why Sully united a City, regardless of the colour of your team. 

MOSAIC PRODUCTIONS ARE A NEW, HULL-BASED, COMMUNITY THEATRE COMPANY.

Buy your tickets here…https://www.hulltruck.co.uk/whats-on/drama/sully/

Drawing from the well of conclusions…

“The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.”John Berger

A sack of tunes including GHEIST, Gia Margaret, Aikon, Audion, Leaving Laurel, Hudson Mohawke, Clark and more.