Wakefield Trinity legend Ian Brooke is still in love with the game that made him

For as well as achieving his boyhood ambition of scoring a try for Trinity at the old Twin Towers at the age of just 20, it also put him back in touch with his birth mother.

Brooke was born in Plymouth in 1943, but adopted at six months by a couple from Wakefield where he has lived ever since, making his name with the great Trinity teams and West Yorkshire rivals, Bradford Northern, as well as playing 13 times and scoring five tries for Great Britain.

Brooke explained: “When I scored the try against Wigan at Wembley, my birth mother was a cook for a professor at an Oxford college and she saw me on the telly and she wrote me a letter and that’s how I found out about my real parents.

“I never met my father. He died before I could get in contact but I kept in touch with my mother until she died.”

Brooke went to school at Lawefield Lane in Wakefield, where a fellow pupil in his year and rugby team was former Trinity chairman Sir Rodney Walker.

“My dad was a real Trinity supporter so as young as I can remember I was always at the match in all weathers, home and away,” he recalled

Brook credits his rugby-mad teachers at the city’s Lawefield Lane and Snapethorpe Schools for the grounding they gave him in the game.

“At Snapethorpe, Mr Ward used to take maths and there was a gardening class and while all the lads were out there, I’d be in the classroom with Mr Ward and he’d be showing me on the blackboard how I should be playing! He was a real Wakey fan and I learned a heck of a lot about rugby from school.”

After leaving school, where he captained the City’s schoolboys and also played county and youth international games, he went down to Trinity, where fellow future GB international Bob Haigh was a contemporary along with Wakefield winger Gerry Mann.

But just a season after his heroics in the 25-10 Wembley success, Brooke was on the move to re-formed Bradford Northern, where he scored a try in the 1965 Yorkshire Cup final win over Hunslet at Headingley.

He returned to Belle Vue and played in both their Championship-winning sides, including scoring two tries in the replay victory over St Helens at Swinton in 1967.

The following year he played in arguably the British game’s most famous match – the 1968 “Watersplash” Challenge Cup Final.

“I thought you might ask about that,” he laughs.

“In the circumstances, it wouldn’t be played now, with the thunderstorm and water all over the ground. It was a really good game under the conditions, I thought we were the better side, but that is how it goes.

“I disagreed with the obstruction try because I was first to the ball and I brought it away. I don’t think either Leeds player would have got there before me.

“In the modern game, with all the cameras and replays, I am 100 per cent certain it wouldn’t be a try.

“But that is how it is and you have got to take it on the chin and get on with it. But it still does spark memories all the time when people talk about it.”

Brooke featured in the BBC programme – Rugby League’s Legendary Watersplash Final –made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the match and admits he was overcome with emotion watching it back and at the end the interview with Don Fox, who famously missed a kick in front of the posts to win the Cup.

Now 77 and still working part-time, Brooke’s love of the game still burns brightly. He is a regular at Belle Vue, with fellow legend, Neil Fox, the game’s record points scorer, and the pair still met every week socially before Covid.

“I still watch the game and my wife will say stop shouting at the telly! But when you have played you see things differently.”

“I have really missed it this year, it is not the same watching it on TV, you miss the atmosphere. I like to be out in the crowd, all the comments and shouting. Me and Neil used to sit near a guy shouting ‘get ‘em onside!’ all the time. We’d be saying ‘shut up!’ That’s the game.

“Hopefully we will be able to get started again in March.”

Internationally, Brooke scored five tries, toured Australia and played in the 1968 World Cup.

“Those are experiences you can’t replicate. If it hadn’t been for rugby league, I’d have been stuck in Wakefield all the time. I’ve met some great people and you see all the old players at the dinners and everyone is friends.

“It’s what they call the ‘rugby league family’.

“Like what Kevin Sinfield is doing for Rob Burrow now, it is absolutely brilliant and it touches the heart.

“I am chuffed with what I did in my career and wish I was still playing now.”

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