HERE'S a tough sports question for young pub quiz fans: name the only Skipton-born man who won a Rugby World Cup winner's medal despite having a try controversially disallowed in the last minutes of the final?

A puzzler, this, for - surely? - none of the English internationals who lifted the Webb-Ellis trophy in Sydney two years ago had Craven roots? Well, lads, the answer lies in the numbers. Think 13, not 15.

For although I feel a bit of a cad for giving the game away, our Skipton hero played professional rugby league and won his coveted medal long before the amateurs at the RFU stole the idea to come up with a 15-man World Cup.

Older fans would know the name David Jeanes, born on Skipton's Greatwood Estate 62 years ago, whose sporting life saw many twists and turns.

But its pinnacle was snatching that World Cup victory from the Australians way back in 1972 - and Great Britain hasn't beaten the Kangaroos in a full series since!

I went to see David in his spacious detached house in an upmarket suburb of Bingley because the Aussies have, once again, just beaten Great Britain (the editor insists that the Aussies are the world's best rugby team of either code, no argument).

I wanted to know how if he could remember a rare feeling of triumph after that game in France 34 years ago.

The answer was surprising: "It didn't really feel much of a triumph then, never mind now. It was a strange game. I had a try disallowed a couple of minutes before the end because the ref said I hadn't grounded the ball whilst I knew fine well I had.

"It went to extra time and the final result was a 10-10 draw but, because we had beaten the Aussies in an earlier round, we were awarded the championship. There were not a lot of British fans there and, quite frankly, the result got very little attention back at home. It was only a few weeks later, when the team was invited onto the 'This is your Life' TV show, that we began to think we might have done something special."

The strange thing about David's sporting career is that, had his dad got his way, he would have been a soccer player or an athlete.

Father Edgar was a British Rail platelayer with an obsession for sport and was a founder member of the Skipton Bulldogs football club. He wanted his lad to be even better and started him training when he was still in short pants - "he used to build me up by feeding me raw eggs because he wanted me to be either a professional footballer or a successful sprinter."

It worked. Young David was 6ft 1in by the time he entered his teens, but a mega-change was about to enter his life. As one of the post-World War Two baby boom, he came to scholarship age when Ermysted's Grammar School was overloaded with pupils so arrangements were made for the surplus of bright young lads to go to Keighley Grammar.

David was one of these and there, for the first time in his life, he was told he must play rugby (union, of course):

"I thought I would hate it but I took to it like a duck to water. I was very big for my size - heavy as well as tall - and we had to take pity on some of the smaller lads at school. But that didn't apply when we played Ermysted's and I think we beat them every time we met.

"I'm told the Ermysted's headmaster was furious when he found out that this huge young player could have been on his team rather than the opposition."

On leaving school, David continued to play union for Keighlians and began a career with a firm of electrical contractors. Having married wife Susan, a Keighley lass, his career took them to Wakefield where they started their family of two boys and a girl.

David played for Wakefield, then one of the leading Yorkshire union clubs, and one Easter came an event that was to change his life: "We went away on a tour of rugby clubs in South Wales at a time when Welsh rugby union was the best in the world. And at Ebbw Vale, a Welsh international told me I should move down there.

"Although the game was strictly amateur - great players were banned for just writing books about their careers - this international told me that he had been given a job by a local company, but he never had to do any work. He was, in fact, a full time rugby player.

"Somehow, word got round and back in Wakefield, a scout from Wakefield Trinity rugby league club turned up and offered me a contract. The money was paltry - I was never anything more than a part-time professional - but Trinity had a huge reputation in the town and I was flattered that they thought I was good enough."

So he switched and started what was a seven-year glittering career with first Wakefield, Great Britain and later Leeds.

Some of the rugby unions officials at Wakefield ostracised him - "it was always the committee members who did that, never players" - and he did not go back to their ground for 20 years. By this time, his business career was growing and he was eventually offered a directorship. But not before his fellow directors had given him a quiet talk along lines not unknown to hundreds or rugbymen.

"I had been lucky not to sustain any serious injuries," he grinned. "I had never taken a day off work because of injury, although I did turn up on crutches a couple of times. They took me aside and said that I had an important job and they hated seeing me knocked about week after week. I had a growing family and good prospects: it was time to quit the game."

Not one to hold grudges, David Jeanes went back to rugby union when the two codes healed their differences.

He is a leading member of Baildon RFC and was at Sandylands to see them play his home town club on Saturday. It is not often you get the chance to share a jar with a world cup winner - and a Skiptonian to boot.