New changing rooms, toilets and a tea area costing £180,000 are due to open at Upper Wyke Park early this summer, to serve one of Bradford’s oldest amateur rugby league clubs.

Wyke Amateur Rugby League Club, which plays in the Pennine League, has been on the go since the early 1890s when Ernest Ward, owner of the local coalmine, rounded up enough friends and associates from the Robin Hood Inn to challenge Thornton to a game on the village green opposite the Robin Hood.

They switched codes from rugby union to rugby league and later joined the Halifax League. From 1902 to 1914, the men in the hooped shirts won the league championship and the Halifax Cup seven times. Just before the First World War they also reached the semi-final of the Yorkshire Junior Cup.

The new club facilities will replace the former Second World War air raid shelter that players have been changing in since 1946, when the club was obliged to move from Wyke Lane to the local recreation ground.

There was a story in the T&A as far back as May 1993 saying that Bradford Council’s Community and Leisure Sub-Committee was studying a report about the unsuitability of the air raid converted shelter.

At that time the club had 150 young players from under-tens to under-16s, playing in local competitions. That’s why the club needed bigger changing rooms and better all-round accessories.

Twenty-one years down the line something is actually going to happen, thanks to help given to the club by the Friends of Wyke Park, said long-serving club secretary Bill Barraclough. Wyke now has five junior teams.

On another historical note of current interest, during the First World War, nearly half of the Wyke team that you can see in the photograph joined the Army.

Four of them were killed, but who they were is something that Bill Barraclough, who played for the club up until the age of 38, would like to know.

If anyone knows, they can contact him on (01274) 673791.