Sporting Bygones: Harrogate Cup win was not the shape of things to come for 'cultured' Pearson

There are no prizes for spotting a youthful Guy Easterby, the rangy scrum-half who would progress to the highest echelons of the game by playing in a World Cup with Ireland and representing the Barbarians.

But look to Clegg's right and the facial image brings similar feelings of certain recognition yet somehow with a strange sense of dislocation.

A moment of clarity points towards a potential resemblance to Hull City's head of football operations, Adam Pearson, presumably in his earlier days, but why then would the football high-flier be so central to rugby celebrations at Otley's Cross Green ground, of all places?

Stay loyal to your initial guesswork as it is correct. Before his career turned towards brokering significant business deals for a host of football clubs, including initially a highly successful spell as commercial director at Leeds United, the ambitious Harrogate-born and residing character had his eyes on another pathway.

"Adam was a second-team/first-team player for us," recalled Clegg.

"He was a real decent lad; a 100 per center and someone who wanted to play at a lot higher level.

"We always knew he had big talent – just not in rugby! I think his future always lay in the round ball game. Even back then, he was always a bit of an entrepreneur.

"I remember he applied for the commercial director's jobs at Leeds and Middlesbrough and was offered both.

"He took the one at Leeds and hit it off with George Graham, who had just taken over as manager and was living in Harrogate at the time."

The charismatic Clegg has distinct memories of this particularly dour Yorkshire Cup affair, when his reigning champions edged laboriously past gutsy Bradford & Bingley.

The overwhelming favourites had failed to live up to their billing, playing well within themselves, and their slumbering nature almost cost them when the aforementioned Pearson – a "cultured" centre – momentarily took his eye off proceedings.

"I can still see Adam's face now," explained Clegg.

"They got a penalty and – while Adam was still just strolling back towards the tryline – took a quick tap to score.

"It was a garbage try to concede and I went ape shouting at him.

"I was ballistic but we smile about it now and always have a laugh."

Bradford & Bingley centre Chris Hemsley was the one who capitalised for the only try of the game but full-back Matthew Yeats kicked all Harrogate's points as the Claro Roaders narrowly held onto their crown having defeated star-studded Otley 23-4 the previous year at Morley.

It is that earlier 1991 triumph which Clegg, who had such a vivid and rich career with Harrogate both as player and coach, recollects most fondly calling it the "game of my life."

"They'd beaten us by about 50 points in the league earlier that season with Nigel Melville at scrum-half, John Howarth at 10 and Glyn Melville as well," he said.

"They just expected to turn up and turn us over again but we absolutely annihilated them.

"It was a great day and a real achievement I'll never forget."

Clegg, who joined Harrogate from hometown York RI as a fly-half when he was 18 and later re-invented himself as a blindside flanker, had also lifted the trophy as captain in 1981.

He led the side to a 12-3 success over Morley as the Claro Roaders finally ruled the county once more, ending a 16-year barren run in the famous competition.

Clegg then spent 10 years as coach at his adopted home before moving up a level to neighbouring Otley, where he twice defied huge chasms in financial clout by taking the little, unfashionable club to remarkable fifth-place finishes in the game's second tier.

His long association at Cross Green came to an end last summer but not before he had linked up once more with Easterby, a No 9 with vast Heineken Cup experience compared to the frightfully talented but callow teenager he had cajoled all those years before.

Born in Tadcaster, the elder brother of the indomitable flanker Simon who later featured with the British & Irish Lions having also started out under Clegg at Harrogate, Easterby qualified for Ireland through his mother and went on to win 28 caps.

After leaving Claro Road for Rotherham, he enjoyed a fine career including large stints at Llanelli and then Leinster – where he is now team manager – split by a brief return to Rotherham in the Premiership and finally a short spell with Otley in 2007-08.

However, Clegg recalls their initial time together at Harrogate when the gem was unearthed.

"He was a young kid at Ampleforth (College) who came in at 17 and played first-team rugby really on the recommendation of Roger Shackleton, who played himself for England at fly-half," he said.

"He'd watched him play second team a few weeks earlier and told me to put him straight in. It just went from there.

"Guy had a great kicking game and was very, very aggressive. It was like carrying another wing forward with him in the side – he was a big, strong lad who could tackle, with good hands and quicker than people gave him credit for but in a scuttling style.

"He was a good addition then and just moved up and up to have a great career."

Pearson's career, meanwhile, went in a different direction and so, while Easterby plots ahead to Leinster's Magners League encounter with Newport Gwent Dragons on Friday, he will spend this week liaising with Hull City's new millionaire owners Assem and Ehab Allam.

It is a far cry from those amateur days in North Yorkshire but Clegg insisted: "It was a great time at Harrogate and it was all down to the lads we brought in – they worked together, trained together, drunk together and we're all still good mates now."