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A big freeze exactly 60 years ago led to a massive technical innovation at Headingley Stadium and Leeds becoming one of this country’s most-watched rugby league clubs.

A brutal winter meant the Loiners played just once between December 15, 1962 and March 9 the following year.

That in turn led to an incredible fixture pileup over the final two months of the season, with Leeds cramming in eight fixtures in April and another nine from May 1-24.

At Headingley, there was no rugby between December 1, when Swinton were beaten 30-3 and a 16-7 defeat of Bramley on April 3.

Headingley's famous pitch was in a mess by the 2000s. Rob Burrow squelches through the mud against Hull in Rhinos' first home game of 2007. Picture by Steve Riding.

To put it into context, that is only four weeks shorter than the gap between Rhinos home matches during the coronavirus shutdown two years ago.

The only game Leeds played during the big freeze was a Challenge Cup first round tie at Castleford on February 9, 1963, when Lewis Jones scored a try and two goals and Fred Pickup also touched down in a 10-8 win.

Alan Hardisty and John Walker were Castleford’s try scorers and Albert Lunn kicked a goal, in front of an 11,000 crowd.

Leeds’ final 18 league fixtures of the 1962-63 season were played in 55 days, prompting Leeds’ management to make a bold, but long-sighted, decision to prevent a repeat.

New Rhinos signing Ben Cross was due to make his first appearance on Boxing Day, 2010, but snow and ice meant the game was postponed. Picture by Steve Riding.

More than £10,000 was spent on installing an undersoil heating system - only the second in Britain, after one at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield - which involved more than 30 miles of cables.

Headingley’s ‘electric blanket’ proved a huge success and, for half a century, kept Leeds in action when many other clubs were frozen out.

It also made Headingley a natural choice to host televised matches during an era when rugby league games were regularly broadcast live on the BBC’s Saturday afternoon Grandstand show.

The undersoil heating saw the Leeds club through the rest of the winter era and into the new century, before finally falling apart.

A £1m project to replace the Headingley pitch nears completion on November 21, 2012. Picture by Tony Johnson

By the early 2000s, parts of the system were no longer working and cables beneath the surface turned the pitch into a quagmire.

That led to the heating being turned off in 2002, though the electrics was left in place. In March, 2006, Rhinos’ home derby with Castleford Tigers was postponed because of a frozen pitch and a similar issue led to the 2010 Boxing Day match being switched to New Year’s Day.

In September, 2012, Rhinos announced the Headingley pitch, which had been in place since 1963, would be replaced in a £1m project.

Confirming the plan, chief executive Gary Hetherington admitted: “It is a considerable investment for the club, but vital if we are to maintain our position within the sport and enable us to attract more events to the stadium.”

The technology looks a little different as assistant groundsman Ralph Dockray works on the Headingley pitch in the early 1960s.

The work began in October, immediately after Rhinos’ final home fixture and was completed in time for the Boxing Day derby with Wakefield.

The project, led by then head groundsman Jason Booth, included earthworks to remove the old surface and bringing in 4,000 tonnes of new material.

Modern underground heating, involving 26 miles of electric cables, was installed, along with a new irrigation system.

The old goalposts, dating to the 1970s and concreted in place, were removed and replaced by a new set which would be taken out for renovation work.

Leeds Rhinos nostalgia: when Headingley's electric blanket made rugby league history