Remembering the 04/05 Leeds Tykes and their Powergen Cup win
Leeds Tykes celebrate their underdog 20-12 victory over Bath in the 2005 Powergen Cup Final
Credit: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Yorkshire Carnegie’s relegation from the Championship, and having just a measly two points to their name in the 2019-20 season, clearly says they are one of the biggest casualties of the RFU’s decision to pull funding from lower league clubs.
However, the writing has been on the wall financially for years now for the once great northern union institution who have spent decades in the shadow of their bigger brother in league, Leeds Rhinos.
The decision to close their famous academy due to cashflow problems, which has produced England internationals such as Danny Care, Tom Palmer and Jordan Crane, caused one of its graduates, Alex Rieder, to label the decision “a joke”:
According to the Rugby Paper, Leeds’ academy operated on a pittance last season and the club could not afford to meet the £200,000 obligation to keep it running.
It is a sad fall from grace for a team who, 15 years ago, won the domestic Powergen Cup and completed one of the greatest escapes in Premiership history.
The Flanker looks back to the 2004/05 season and when the rugby team formerly know as Leeds Tykes experienced one of the proudest moments in their chequered history.
Cup run blessed relief over wretched Premiership form
For some struggling teams, a cup run can provide a chance to get some form under their belts and generate much needed confidence that wins can bring.
Like Wigan Athletic lifting the 2013 FA Cup during a relegation battle or Sunderland reaching the League Cup Final in 2014 while being at the wrong end of the table, Leeds Tykes were in the mire throughout the 2004/05 Premiership season.
A tough season had left them bottom and they were heading towards the trapdoor by late March, at this point still eight points adrift of next-placed Worcester Warriors in the table.
The Yorkshiremen relied heavily on the goal kicking of Scotland fly-half Gordon Ross, but prided themselves a measly defence that ranked 4th in the league and only conceded 40 tries that season.
The Powergen Cup, the precursor to the Anglo-Welsh Cup which itself is today the Premiership Rugby Cup, was a straight knockout tournament with club sides from across the UK much more closely aligned to the FA Cup structure.
Premiership teams would enter the cup at Round 6, which Leeds did by emphatically smashing Pertemps Bees 81-7.
Despite the patchy league form, they reached the 2005 Powergen Cup Final thanks to a stunning 24-19 victory over Northampton Saints at Franklin’s Gardens in the quarter-finals before downing London Irish 15-6 at Headingley.
They would face Bath in the showpiece game, who had won 10 finals from 10 attempts between 1984 and 1996 in domestic cup competitions and were fighting for a place in the Premiership playoff spots.
To quote David Brent’s band name, this final already looked like a forgone conclusion and Bath would take the spoils.
Backs to the wall and Andre Snyman writes his name into folklore
Sometimes in sport, the stars just align. That same year, in six mad minutes Liverpool would turn the Champions League Final on it’s head as they roared back from 3-0 down to claim their fifth European title.
For Leeds Tykes, the final started in similarly disastrous circumstances as they lost captain Iain Balshaw, the British Lions full-back, to an injury inside three minutes.
Shortly after England centre Phil Christophers limped off as well, with barely a quarter of the game gone.
Despite Bath great Chris Malone opening the scoring with three points, Gordon Ross responded with two penalties of his own before Leeds actually grabbed the first try and the unthinkable was truly on.
The diminutive Ross glided through a hole in the the black and blue shirted midfield before chipping over a covering Matt Perry for centre Chris Bell to claim the ball and force his way over.
Ross converted for a 13-3 lead, but two more Malone penalties hauled Bath to within striking distance as the interval beckoned.
However, Australian first-five Malone would suffer a horror moment as his long floaty pass looked ripe for picking, with South Africa international Snyman gleefully accepting the gift.
You can tell what happened next below.
Snyman, who played every test for South Africa against the British and Irish Lions in 1997, streaked away for a full 70 metres in what would prove to be the game-winning score as Malone could only jog forlorny behind.
Despite landing another penalty in the resumption, with another hitting the bar, Malone could not release his misfiring backline although Bath enjoyed next to all the ball and territory.
Try as they might, stellar talents such as Isaac Fe'aunati, Joe Maddock, Frikkie Welsh and Olly Barkley were unable to break down the heroic Leeds defence.
They held on for a brilliant 20-12 win, with Wales international number eight Alix Popham stealing possession close to his own line and Snyman smashing Matt Perry with an all-enveloping tackle key moments in of the defensive effort.
On the game, Leeds legend Mike Shelley, who made 244 appeareances for the club, told the Yorkshire Post in 2015: “We’d done a lot of work that season on mindset.
“There was a bit of your average psychology and it was more team prep really, discussions about what happens if this happens or that.
“We knew Balsh was carrying an injury going in and we’d gone through if he did go off what would happen. And if someone else did what happens then.
Andre Snyman on his way to an intercept try and a Powergen Cup win
Credit: Jason O'Brien/Action Images
“So we’d pretty much rehearsed every situation and gone through so many scenarios so there was no panic about who was going to come on.
“We beat Bath twice that season. When we read the press afterwards and saw this massive ‘upset’, for us that was a bit of… ‘Why?’
“No-one was bothered as such. Bath hadn’t lost a cup final before but they were different Bath teams. Teams have their moment in the sun. They weren’t that strong that year.”
The final whistle sparked jubilation at Twickenham as Leeds won their first piece of silverware in the clubs history, roared on by 15,500 travelling fans.
With the trophy in the cabinet and a place in the Heineken Cup for next year, pending survival, attention turned back to Premiership matters and a relegation dogfight for the ages.
Four wins out of four as Tykes try to pull off escape act
Before the final on the 16 April, the previous round of the Premiership had seen them narrowly squeak past league leaders Leicester Tigers 23-22.
The gods were smiling on Leeds at Headingley that Sunday evening against the East Midlanders, as the usually metronomic Andy Goode missed his first kick of the night one minute into overtime to give the Tykes a precious victory.
They backed it up with an even more stunning away 33-15 win against Gloucester at Kingsholm the following week, with tries from Mike Shelley, Chris Bell, Richard Parks and Gavin Kerr securing a priceless bonus point in the process.
Steve James in his match report for the Guardian said: “To come to Kingsholm as the bottom club in the Premiership and slip away with not just a win but a bonus point as well is truly impressive stuff, however bad Gloucester may have been.
“When Davies admitted he had confided in his assistant Jon Callard beforehand that this would be a ‘dream result’ there was clearly still a degree of fantasy in his hopes at that stage.
“That sort of thing is just not supposed to happen here, but these are curious times at Kingsholm.”
Wales international flanker Richard Parks hauls down Henry Tuilagi during Leeds 23-22 win over Leicester Tigers
Credit: Alex Livesey/Getty Images
In a game that neither team could afford to lose, Tykes carried on their winning streak by then downing bottom side Harlequins 21-10 as they could almost glimpse safety.
Leeds were still trailing 10-7 with 10 minutes left when a sweeping move, which began in their own 22, resulted in centre Phil Christophers barging his way over the tryline.
Seven minutes later a short pop pass by scrumhalf Alan Dickens sent that man Snyman over again for a vital try and the visitors headed back to West London without the comfort of a bonus point.
It meant that Leeds sat on 37 points and in ninth place heading into a truly bonkers final day, where themselves, Worcester, London Irish, Northampton Saints or Harlequins could have gone down.
Crucially, they were two clear of bottom side Quins but faced defeated cup finalists Bath again in the last round.
In a case of perfect symmetry, Bath dominated proceedings before a late 81st minute try by replacement prop Matt Holt secured Leeds’ place at the top table for another season in a scrappy 10-6 win.
After a barely believable six weeks, the Tykes had gone from being rooted to the bottom by eight points to Powergen Cup winners and finishing as high as 8th.
On the turnaround and impact of the cup victory, Shelley said: “You can’t discount what winning a national cup does to players’ morale.
“It definitely binds the team together and you get a taste of – I don’t want to say glory – success.
“But one of the things we said was it means nothing if we get relegated. The cup was losing a little bit of its recognition and it was the last year before it went Anglo-Welsh.
“There was still a Heineken Cup place up for grabs for it which we did earn. We didn’t want to be the team that won the cup and got relegated in the same year.”
They didn’t, finishing a comfortable five points clear in the end. Yorkshire Carnegie may have slipped since but the Leeds Tykes of 2004-05 will always hold its place in folklore.
