Yorkshire golf: Halifax-Huddersfield renew friendly rivalry with St Annes Old Links

The visitors edged to a 7-6 victory in Lancashire – a return match will be played at Halifax-Huddersfield president Glynn Mellor’s home club Elland in the autumn – in a contest comprising five morning foursomes, and eight afternoon fourball better ball battles.

But the union’s marketing and communications executive, and team manager, Frank Greaves stressed the outcome on the course was “immaterial”, adding “friendship, people and places make memories”. The connection between club and union developed from an initial nexus before World War II between St Annes and a small team of Yorkshire county golfers known as Yorkshire Nomads. Each year they played Royal Lytham St Annes and on one visit to Lancashire popped in to neighbouring St Annes, whose then secretary, Jack Buckley Lowe, fixed up the Nomads to play with some members.

So began an annual fixture between Nomads and St Annes until its discontinuation with the outbreak of war and the Nomads’ disbandment.

Shortly after the formation of the Halifax-Huddersfield union in 1947, its then President, Tom Day, revived the tradition and it has endured to this day, Covid notwithstanding.

Mellor told the St Annes team: “What a fantastic day this has been. It has been wonderful for me, the hospitality has been great and the course is absolutely unbelievable, magnificent.

“When you come back to Elland in October we hope to give you a really good day and we will do our very best to entertain you and have a great night there.”

Greaves, who arranged Sunday’s event along with St Annes counterpart Jonny Moss, said: “After seven or eight times playing you think, ‘have I done this enough’, but someone said to me, ‘once you get into this band of people, why would you want to let it go?’

“To those people that are new today, I would urge you to think about that because the friendship between the union and the club is immense and we are just passing through and carrying on the tradition.”

Three union pairings – Andy Whitworth and Jim Fairhurst, Greaves and Mark Birkett, and Paul Taylor and Darren Davison – won both their matches to lay the foundations for overall victory.