White Rose greats who were allowed to show their pride

These days every week brings a match which – we are assured by TV and the marketing people – is "massive" be it a common-or-garden Premiership encounter, a Heineken Cup game, an autumn international or a Six Nations' Championship fixture, not to mention summer tours including those by the Lions.

But on a cold afternoon at Otley, before a crowd of a couple of thousand and a handful of newspaper reporters – no TV, radio or magic media men and women in those days – the best players from Yorkshire and Lancashire were playing not just for pride and the County Championship but for their international futures.

Then the championship was, for many, the step-ladder to the highest level. Of Yorkshire's clubs in the mid-Fifties, only Headingley enjoyed regular fixtures on a national basis, although Bradford, Halifax, Harrogate and others had their aspirations. If you were not playing what was called senior club rugby your chances of breaking into the national team were minimal. The only route open was to shine in the championship then earn an invitation to take part in the pre-Christmas England trials, culminating in a match between the Probables and the Possibles, scratch teams who would perform at a virtually empty Twickenham and try to impress the selectors who had their ankle-length Crombie overcoats, Homburg hats and rigid ideas as to who should represent England.

For those who made the grade there was the likelihood of an invitation to join one of the elite clubs, to shine week-by-week and thus enhance international prospects; for the rest it was back to their pattern of fixtures across the North with perhaps an end-of-season tour as the annual highlight. For many, playing for Yorkshire was the pinnacle of their careers.

The County Championship is still with us but is a hugely different animal to what it was in its prime – until the country's self-elected major clubs decided they did not want their chief assets, the players, performing in what they (the clubs, not the players) considered a second-class competition.

Yorkshire had won the county title in the 1952-53 season and with their glittering three-quarter line were keen to regain their crown. There was no difficulty in 1955 persuading clubs, whoever they were, to release their players for county rugby – as this Yorkshire line-up shows with three players travelling to Otley from Northampton, one from Sale and another from Wilmslow.

Yorkshire enjoyed a hard-earned victory over Lancashire but an earlier defeat at the hands of Cheshire at New Brighton meant the Northern group ended with in a three-way tie, requiring play-offs involving Yorkshire, Cheshire and Lancashire.

Yorkshire enjoyed a home victory over Cheshire just before Christmas but were then beaten by Lancashire – who were under the inspired leadership of the great Eric Evans – at Blundellsands so their dream ended.

The County Championship then was a rugby rite. Every September Yorkshire, Lancashire, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland (later Cumbria), Durham and Cheshire would invite their best players – either born or residing in their catchment area – to attend trials and by October the show would be ready for the road, Yorkshire traditionally completing their preparations by playing Ulster, one year in Belfast, the next at home, with the overnight sea crossing part of the fun.

Then it would be a pilgrimage to familiar venues, the vast, echoing greyhound stadium at Gosforth, leafy Wilmslow, forbidding New Friarage and far away Workington, one of the best playing surfaces in the game but a tedious journey no matter which (pre-motorway) route was selected.

For those few who had the means it was possible to watch all the games in the county season but for the majority the only option was to watch Yorkshire at home, fixtures being played on a rota basis which generally took in Cross Green at Otley, Headingley's Clarence Field or Lidget Green, Bradford.

There we could see the best Yorkshire – and the North – could produce, men who would, early in the New Year be gracing Twickenham, the Arms Park, Stade Colombes and all the other great international arenas, all of them a long way from Otley but all the inspiration for those in the white or Yorkshire and the red-and-white of Lancashire.