IN part two of rugby correspondent Bill Marshall’s interview with David Jeanes, part of the last Great Britain squad to win the Rugby League World Cup in 1972, the 78-year-old from Bingley recalls how a knock on his door changed his life and how, just a few weeks later, he was playing in the biggest rugby league matches of the time live on BBC TV.

David Jeanes may have been brought up on rugby union, but it was said that he was made for rugby league and, then living in Wakefield, his local professional RL club soon made contact.

He said: "I played a couple of game for Wakefield RUFC the season after our Easter Tour (of 1967-68) and someone came knocking on my door saying ‘I am the chairman of Wakefield Trinity and we would like you to come down to training tonight and sign for us’.

“I talked to my wife Susan and said ‘What do I do?’. Trevor Foster was also in touch with me from Bradford Northern and it was not long after the time that that rugby league film came out, This Sporting Life, with Richard Harris.

“Wakefield wanted me to play a trial game (which is like crossing the Rubicon), and I said ‘I am not doing that because there is no way that people will not know that I have played a game of rugby league as I have played for Yorkshire and I will be ostracised from rugby union for ever more’.

“I said ‘If you want to sign me make me an offer but I am not playing any trial game’. I went down that night to meet the committee and they said we will offer you £400 to sign and once you have played six games we will give you another £250 and when you have played more games you will get another £250 etc.”

But Jeanes said: “The money wasn’t important. I had a young family, we had recently had our second son and I had a good job (as a company secretary) and we could manage. This would basically just be a bit of extra money but the thing was that I enjoyed rugby.

“The way that I played everybody had always told me that I was a rugby league player. I liked to have a ball in hand and knock people over and I wasn’t slow as I had been taught by my dad how to sprint.

“I had one training session and my match that Saturday was against Featherstone Rovers with the second half on TV.

“The first person that I saw in the changing rooms after I had signed was Neil Fox and he said ‘It says in the papers that we have signed a giant, but I am as big as you’.

“During the first half they were telling me ‘Do this, do that, run here, run there’ and we got the ball halfway through the first half and someone said ‘Right you are running this time’.

“I got the ball and came up to their little full back Brian Wrigglesworth and he nearly finished up in the stand. I put the ball down and after Neil Fox kicked the goal I said to him ‘What about the giant story now?’

“Playing prop at union helped me to play league as I got used to playing alongside the hooker and standing on one leg while I was trying to hook the ball with the other, so it didn’t come as such a big transition, but league was faster than anything I had known before.

“I used to train with Bob Haigh, who was like lightning and was the word-record try-scorer for a forward at Leeds, scoring over 40 tries in a season. I used to have to run with him, train with him and that was unnerving as he was faster than any of the backs.”

Winning the Championship final with Wakefield in May, 1968, defeating Hull KR 17-10 at Headingley, was a landmark occasion for Jeanes.

He said: “I had played less than 30 games of rugby league and that was another phenomenal day for me. I was playing No 8 every game. They never rested me, never dropped me. We had won the Championship the year before and we were playing Hull KR, Roger Millward and all.

“I have a video of that game, and it is one of the few that I have as the BBC get rid of them. I got the ball on the 20-yard line and ploughed through about four defenders. There is a picture of me reaching over the line to score. It was one of the best days of my life and one that I will always remember.”

But the highs of that day were a stark contrast to what happened the following Saturday when Wakefield Trinity faced Leeds in the Challenge Cup final at Wembley Stadium.

Next time: David Jeanes finds humour during one of the most famous rugby league matches of all time - a game that cruelly and unfairly defined the career of the legendary Don Fox