Developing a Team

For the first BCAFL season the club made Chris Cook, a former Warwick offensive lineman who had come across a training session by chance, its head coach, with Jez Brown as player-coach on defence. The league debut, at Surrey in the Southern Conference’s Eastern Division, ended 60–0, with Dan Bartram throwing an 81-yard touchdown pass to Colin Brown and Danny Croucher running for two scores. A week later, at a home ground missing a goalpost, John Funnell and Croucher scored on the ground and Bartram hit Colin Brown for a long touchdown as the Hurricanes beat Bath Killer Bees 18–6.

Inexperience soon caught up with them. Southampton Stags won 26–0, Beau Riffenburgh’s Cambridge Pythons 43–0 and UEA 20–0. Two games were called off and recorded as 0–0 ties, and a 6–2 home defeat by Surrey left the first season at 2–4–2. Bartram was voted offensive MVP and linebacker Steve Reid defensive MVP. Matt Coppinger, the team MVP, became the first Hurricane selected for the GB Bulldogs, touring Ireland in the summer of 1995.

Many of the founding players then graduated. Duncan Leslie, who had coached the GB Crusaders and the Southend Sabres, took charge of an almost entirely rookie squad in 1995–96. The team went 1–6–1, its only win an 8–0 victory over Reading, but the club later credited Leslie with introducing many of its future veterans to the game. Cornerback Greg Ashman was voted team MVP and selected for the GB Bulldogs, and defensive end Andrew Dennison was defensive MVP.

By 1996 the club was short of players and, in its founder’s words, “on the brink of collapse”, until the arrival of Asy Ho, Anthony Fitzpatrick, Martin Brown and Frenchman Michael Coubray, alongside tight end Arnault Lancia, turned it round. The 1996–97 Hurricanes went 5–3, the club’s first winning season, and missed the playoffs by a single game. Lancia, an All-College tight end, was voted team MVP, Ho rookie of the year and Fitzpatrick a Southern Conference all-star. Giles Hider, who had never played the game, was co-head coach; the club counted his hard work among the keys to the season. He shared the role with Coppinger, who in his final playing season was voted BCAFL MVP; his #19 shirt was later retired.

In April 1997 the members elected Ho chairman and Fitzpatrick secretary, and the new committee opened talks with GB Bulldogs head coach Beau Riffenburgh. The season had shown that the club had the players; what it lacked was coaching.