Perth Red
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Great to see RL in The Times!
On Friday, before the game, Neil Hudgell will continue the work that occupies most of his days on behalf of the postmasters. He will be with Jo Hamilton, the postmistress whose conviction he helped to overturn and whom he helped in the fight for compensation. And then, at some point late in the afternoon, he will turn his attention to another group he has long been working to save.
This other group is Hull Kingston Rovers, a club with whom Hudgell has half a century’s worth of history. He started going to watch them when his grandfather took him in the Seventies and he went from there to becoming a ballboy; in the Nineties the law firm he founded began sponsoring them, and then in the Noughties, “when everybody else cleared off,” to use his words, “I was essentially left holding the baby.”
Sometimes it has looked as though the baby wouldn’t survive. But Hudgell has sunk in about £10million from his own pocket to keep the club going. Now, their rude health is about to be properly put to the test.
In that half-century’s association, the glory days remain the Eighties. Hull KR haven’t won a trophy since 1985. On Friday they host Warrington Wolves in the Betfred Super League semi-final; though while this is really big, many round here are as delighted with the fact that their club are still alive as they are with the idea that the good times are back again.
Hudgell is a face that some may recognise from occasional appearances on TV news programmes. He looks after some 900 postmasters but he has also been seen representing his other clients, including victims of the Manchester Arena bombing and the Nottingham knife attacks.
He came into the postmasters’ scandal slightly too late to have been given a starring role in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which was a first step on the road to long-delayed justice for hundreds of postmasters wrongly prosecuted for fraud, theft or false accounting.
When I ask who would play him in a sequel, he kind of mumbles that he’s never really thought about that. This is pretty much in character, says Paul Sewell, the club chairman, another local businessman who is Hudgell’s close friend; they were both awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Hull but you will never see Hudgell using the Dr before his name. Not for him any labels or titles or sense of any difference between himself and the community to which he is rooted.
Hull is hardly one of the UK’s more affluent cities and east Hull, the home of Hull KR, is its poorer half. Hull KR has also long been the smaller, poorer brother of the city’s other rugby league team from the west side, Hull FC. It is in Hudgell’s nature, then, that he would hate to allow Hull KR to be downtrodden. Like the postmasters, really. “Not on my watch,” is a familiar Hudgell expression.
Paul Lakin, his chief executive at Hull KR, says Hudgell likes to play David against the Goliaths. Hudgell wouldn’t particularly encourage any such glorification.
Sewell puts it differently when he explains how he switched allegiances from Hull City. He had got “fed up”, he said, with the football club, with its foreign owners and players without any local ties. Hudgell persuaded him down to Hull KR instead and he fell in love with a different kind of club, welcomely anachronistic in some respects because of its community roots that have a depth increasingly rare in modern sport.
www.thetimes.com
On Friday, before the game, Neil Hudgell will continue the work that occupies most of his days on behalf of the postmasters. He will be with Jo Hamilton, the postmistress whose conviction he helped to overturn and whom he helped in the fight for compensation. And then, at some point late in the afternoon, he will turn his attention to another group he has long been working to save.
This other group is Hull Kingston Rovers, a club with whom Hudgell has half a century’s worth of history. He started going to watch them when his grandfather took him in the Seventies and he went from there to becoming a ballboy; in the Nineties the law firm he founded began sponsoring them, and then in the Noughties, “when everybody else cleared off,” to use his words, “I was essentially left holding the baby.”
Sometimes it has looked as though the baby wouldn’t survive. But Hudgell has sunk in about £10million from his own pocket to keep the club going. Now, their rude health is about to be properly put to the test.
In that half-century’s association, the glory days remain the Eighties. Hull KR haven’t won a trophy since 1985. On Friday they host Warrington Wolves in the Betfred Super League semi-final; though while this is really big, many round here are as delighted with the fact that their club are still alive as they are with the idea that the good times are back again.
Hudgell is a face that some may recognise from occasional appearances on TV news programmes. He looks after some 900 postmasters but he has also been seen representing his other clients, including victims of the Manchester Arena bombing and the Nottingham knife attacks.
He came into the postmasters’ scandal slightly too late to have been given a starring role in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which was a first step on the road to long-delayed justice for hundreds of postmasters wrongly prosecuted for fraud, theft or false accounting.
When I ask who would play him in a sequel, he kind of mumbles that he’s never really thought about that. This is pretty much in character, says Paul Sewell, the club chairman, another local businessman who is Hudgell’s close friend; they were both awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Hull but you will never see Hudgell using the Dr before his name. Not for him any labels or titles or sense of any difference between himself and the community to which he is rooted.
Hull is hardly one of the UK’s more affluent cities and east Hull, the home of Hull KR, is its poorer half. Hull KR has also long been the smaller, poorer brother of the city’s other rugby league team from the west side, Hull FC. It is in Hudgell’s nature, then, that he would hate to allow Hull KR to be downtrodden. Like the postmasters, really. “Not on my watch,” is a familiar Hudgell expression.
Paul Lakin, his chief executive at Hull KR, says Hudgell likes to play David against the Goliaths. Hudgell wouldn’t particularly encourage any such glorification.
Sewell puts it differently when he explains how he switched allegiances from Hull City. He had got “fed up”, he said, with the football club, with its foreign owners and players without any local ties. Hudgell persuaded him down to Hull KR instead and he fell in love with a different kind of club, welcomely anachronistic in some respects because of its community roots that have a depth increasingly rare in modern sport.
How Post Office crusader brought success (and Coldplay) to Hull KR
As well as helping sub-postmasters in their fight for justice, the lawyer Neil Hudgell has been the saviour for a rugby league club who are now Betfred Super League semi-finalists
www.thetimes.com
