A Game Sustained

95 Running out of steam: 1917 match midweek. They decided to play it on the Saturday proposed for the final and postpone that game until the following week. In September, closure of the Yorkshire Council season was affected by another controversy, with Elland unhappy that the ground at Morley had been selected for the deciding match. Elland complained that to get there in time its players would have to miss important work or the club would have to send an unrepresentative side. Shortly afterwards, however, such concerns were put into perspective as the war had another direct impact on the county. On 4 September at 7pm, Scarborough was again bombarded from the sea, this time by a German submarine. Many people were out on the seafront at the time and a shell fell on the North Marine Road cricket ground, where a group of women was playing tennis. At the end of the summer, Saltaire secured the Bradford League title for the first time and J.J.Booth presented a cup and medals to the players. In contrast, Idle – without Hobbs – slipped from winning the title in 1916 to 17 th in 1917. Slaithwaite topped the Huddersfield League, without losing a match. However, it lost to Linthwaite in the championship play-off which decided the competition. Moldgreen won both the Association Cup and the Lumb Cup. The local season in the Sheffield area was also considered by some to be ‘one of the best for many years’, with the league titles not determined until the final round of fixtures in some cases. The season ended less happily for C.B.Llewellyn, who had his foot crushed at work and could not participate in some of the later games. Support for the war effort The scale of injuries sustained by the armed forces continued to be reflected in the number of wounded men who were increasingly visible in the towns and villages of Yorkshire, or else being looked after in hospitals around the county. Among them was Private Jimmy Rothery, who was in Heatherdene Hospital recovering from shrapnel wounds. Rothery had played for Yorkshire between 1903 and 1910