Leeds Tykes are back on the up again, promoted in the week they celebrated Powergen Cup glory

On Wednesday, the players who won the Powergen Cup in the yellow and blue of Leeds Tykes at Twickenham 20 years ago this month, reunited at Headingley for a celebratory lunch. The wine and the stories flowed as old boys like Rob Rawlinson and Mark Regan remembered golden days gone by.

Then three days later, it was jugs of beer being shared around the current crop of players as the club now playing at the more modest surroundings of The Sycamores celebrated clinching promotion back to National One.

For Leeds Tykes, a club that went to the financial brink, plummeted through the divisions and cycled through two rebrands, can toast success again.

“It’s been a really positive week,” says their player/general manager, Jake Brady, in typical understatement.

“We had our celebration and reunion event on the Wednesday when a lot of the former players came from all over the world, about 250-300 people revelling in what was a really good day.

“Then a few days later to win promotion, it’s been a really good week.

“The feeling has been we’ve been going in the right direction for a while now, and a lot of that hard work has resulted in promotion.

“Having that momentum and going in the right direction is one thing, but if you keep it going for so long eventually you get the rewards.”

Anyone who likes a revival story should warm to the Tykes journey.

That Powergen Cup triumph of 2005 was the zenith, but also the start of the downward spiral as striving for repeat success required investment they didn’t have.

Relegated three times from the Premiership they fought their way back up twice through Stuart Lancaster and then Neil Back and Andy Key. But again they pushed too high and with low crowds at Headingley, couldn’t stay in the Premiership.

Down they tumbled, rebranding again as Yorkshire Carnegie in an ill-judged attempt to garner the best talent in the county, until they nearly went bust, lost their RFU-backed academy and their link with the Leeds Rhinos, bottoming out in National Two North.

Phil Davies, on-pitch architect of the glory years, returned and rebranded them Leeds Tykes. Mike Harrison last year, Peter Seabourne and Pete Lucock this year, have led them back to respectability.

Rotherham Titans ambushed them last season and snatched promotion, Sheffield RUFC threatened to do the same 12 months on.

But this year it was different. This season Leeds possessed the staying power.

“We’ve had to be on top of our game all season,” says Brady, whose team has lost just three matches in two fourth-tier campaigns.

“We’ve only had one slip-up all season and Sheffield have kept us on our toes the whole way. To finally get it, with two games to go is a big relief.”

Leeds thought they would be playing to clinch promotion this coming Friday against Harrogate.

Little did the players actually know that a kick to break a 24-24 tie with lowly Sheffield Tigers was actually a kick to win promotion, because Sheffield had lost at Lymm – the only team to have beaten Leeds this season.

“The people on the sidelines and on the bench knew before we did on the pitch,” says Brady. “We were just thinking ‘bloody hell, we can’t afford to slip up here or Sheffield could still catch us’.

“We kicked the penalty and then just defended.

“People were whispering it as we were shaking hands, and then after we did the tunnel to applaud the Tigers, Pete Seabourne (director of rugby) told us we were up.

“Some jugs of beer came down and we started celebrating.”

So what now? How high do Leeds Tykes want to climb again?

Perhaps sagely, given their own travails and the uncertainty surrounding a Championship that is expanding to 14 teams next season and has just welcomed back a club in Worcester that went to the wall three years ago, Leeds Tykes are not making any grand statements.

Sustainability is the watchword.

“We’ve got a round-about idea of what we’d like to do year one, but that all depends on recruitment and retention,” says Brady.

“We’ve set a minimum benchmark of not being in a relegation battle. Then year two push on and go a bit higher. We’ve got to find more resource and attract more revenue to support playing in a higher league and travelling in a national league. So we’ll need a bigger squad.

“We’re already working towards it and feel like we’re in the right place to take that challenge on. The squad of players we’ve got is in a good place; not too old, not too young.

“There’s definitely no grand plans. Long term we want to be in a position where we can challenge for the Championship, but we have to grow the club sustainably and make improvements sensibly.”