Leeds Tykes under Jon Callard rebuilding as a club that offers a pathway for young, local rugby union players

The head coach who helped mastermind Tykes’ famous Powergen Cup win over Bath at Twickenham in 2005, returned in November 2021 to a club picking itself up off the floor having only just avoided the administering of the last rites.

Phil Davies, Callard’s old director of rugby from those heady Premiership days of the early 2000s, had already been back over a year, reviving the club he loved from the near destruction of going to the wall as Yorkshire Carnegie.

It was Davies who did away with the ill-fated Yorkshire name and changed it back to Leeds Tykes.

Arguably his next best move was bringing back Callard.

“Considering the stories that four months previous to when I returned there’d only been eight players, no ground, no training facility,” begins Callard, “it was a complete and utter wreck at that stage, it was a burning ember with one little flicker left in it.

“It could have easily have been let go, which would have been really sad.”

Davies, with the help of investors, strength and conditioning coach Wayne Proctor and some defiant volunteers, kept the club going, albeit now in National One, English rugby’s third tier.

Two months after Callard arrived, Davies - who had never intended to stay for the long-term - was offered the position of director of rugby at World Rugby, an enormous role at the heart of shaping the game.

“I thought Phil and I were going to do it together, and then he got one of the biggest jobs in world rugby, you can’t fail to take that,” says Callard.

“It’s a real honour for him. We’re blessed that Phil was at Leeds, if it wasn’t for Phil and Wayne’s involvement, Leeds would have easily gone.”

A year on, Leeds Tykes are slowly rebuilding, with Callard now the figurehead as the club’s director of rugby.

They play at West Park Leeds RUFC’s modern facilities at The Sycamores in Bramhope, having relocated from what had become a cavernous Headingley rugby ground for their dwindling attendances.

They have only won three games this season and sit second bottom of National One, not knowing how many teams will be relegated to the regionalised fourth tier because the full fallout from Wasps’ and Worcester’s financial implosions has not yet been realised.

But they are still here.

“I think we’re gradually settling down,” Callard tells The Yorkshire Post.

“We’re trying to find our feet again, trying to rebuild the brand. We have a vision of where we want it to be, we want it to be as high as it can be, and if that’s Championship then so be it.

“There’s a lot of passionate people still involved who worked really hard to keep the club afloat, we’ve got a fantastic group of investors, a fantastic group of executive members, and we’re trying to grow the support. I understand the product has got to try and encourage people to come and watch and support, so we will try our best to build that up again.”

Their mission statement has changed as well. To rebrand you have to know what you are, and Leeds Tykes are no longer a Yorkshire Carnegie that superciliously presumes to be the biggest club in the county, attracting players from all points of the Broad Acres. Nor are they a club spouting rhetoric about getting into the Premiership.

But they do want to provide a pathway and a competitive rugby environment for the young men of Leeds.

“We cannot be something that we’re not, we need to understand what we are, and that is being aspirational for a lot of people,” says former England international Callard.

“We want young boys to see Leeds as a stepping stone for their careers, a chance to continue fulfilling their ambition. Last year we lost four players, three to the Championship and one to the Premiership, so we’re all about encouraging development.

“It is a good position to be in, we want to be seen to be helping the community. We’ve got a fantastic relationship with Harrogate RUFC at the moment in terms of loaning players and helping them there.

“We’ve got great relationships with the universities. We want to grow these partnerships and build some with the schools, we want young boys to be making Leeds their choice.

“We’ve got tentative ideas to grow. But you’ve got to live by your means, live by what you produce, so there is no over-spending, no speculating with borrowing.

“We want a community that wants to grow the game and get a big team in Leeds."

And on the pitch in the immediate term? “We’re Leeds Tykes, we want to try and earn respect on and off the field for our behaviour and actions, and that will one day hopefully transpire into more wins than losses,” says Callard.