WAKEFIELD TRINITY’S FIRST BLACK PLAYER
RR: If you could relive one day from your career, which would it be?
MH: My second game for Wakefield Trinity, against St Helens. We’d beaten Wigan on my debut when I faced Trevor Lake. This time I was up against Len Killeen, who had just won the Lance Todd Trophy at Wembley, and I scored two tries. I remember the crowd going mad when I ran behind the sticks for one of them. I bought a copy of the Green Final after the game, a newspaper that was printed late on Saturday afternoons, so you could read the report of the match you’d just played in. It said I was the second Billy Boston because I was very strong! Another day I’d happily relive would be being picked on the left wing on 5th November at Central Park to mark Billy, and we won that game too.
RR: Why did your family leave the Caribbean for the UK?
MH: I came here two months off my 13th birthday. My dad arrived 18 months before my mum and the three of us –I had two younger brothers. We knew Henderson Gill’s family back home. Dad was saving up to buy a house before we got there, but my mum got impatient, so we soon followed. We lived on Birkhouse Lane in Huddersfield, and dad bought another house on that street to rent out. My parents ended up with ten kids – they had another seven in England. The last three were triplets. There was a photo of them in the Daily Express because it was so rare then, and mum was 43. My eight brothers and my sister are all still in England apart from one of the triplets, who is in Scotland. Most are in Huddersfield.