The really true story of the Tigers Head – by Rod Hardwick

I joined Sheffield Tigers as a player in 1962 having graduated from Sheffield University and taken a position with a steel tube manufacturing company on the Sheffield/Rotherham boundary.
During the next few years (1964-1973) I was first Team Secretary and then General Secretary – playing for the club until 1969 while Andrea (my then wife) spending many afternoons helping with players teas.
Following a serious arm break, I briefly returned to playing, but then became a referee for South Yorkshire.
In 1973 my job took me first to Leicester for 3 years then Blackpool – I continued refereeing firstly for Leicester Society then Manchester Society until 1984.
On retirement we moved to Hornsea on the East Yorkshire coast and I have always continued to support Tigers and remained a Vice President attending matches when the team was in the locality .

To the story of the Tigers Head

By a strange quirk of circumstance my father (Eddie Hardwick) and Andrea’s father (Charles Newbold) were both in the RAOC during the Second World War, both served for some considerable time in India, and  both became  Headmasters sometime after the war.  They met for the first time when we got married in 1963.
My father was a keen rugby man (Treasurer of Burton RUFC for many years and a member of Tigers while Andrea and I lived in Sheffield).
Andrea’s father was a Hockey man but appreciated the dedication people had to put in to amateur clubs to help them prosper.
Sometime in the mid 1960’s Andrea’s father (much to the relief of his wife) decided that the Tigers Head that he had brought back from India at the end of his period in the war would be much better if mounted on the wall in the  Tigers Clubhouse rather than in their loft and kindly donated the trophy to the Club.
So there hangs the “tail” of the Tigers Head.