Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

the immortal Sydney Barnes, 27 Bill Bowes, Jim Laker, Tom Goddard, Bill Voce, Arthur Fagg, Cliff Gladwin, Willie Watson and Arthur Mitchell. In 1941, Bill Copson assisted Saltaire, in conjunction with Alf Pope and George Wilson, who had played occasional matches for Yorkshire as an amateur, to win Division B of the League. Winning seventeen of their eighteen matches, with one drawn, the club thus gained promotion to Division A. At the time only one side, Great Horton in 1904 when they played twenty games, had won as many as seventeen league matches in a season. He also helped the club win the Priestley Cup, a knock-out competition, when after being dismissed in the final for 102, they bowled out Undercliffe for only 44. Well acquainted with playing before large crowds – this match was played before nearly eight thousand spectators at the Park Avenue ground – Copson took six for 30 and Pope four for fourteen. The side were thus unbeaten in the two competitions in this season, an achievement which has never been equalled. World War Two 61 Bradford League cricket. The Saltaire side which won the Priestley Cup in 1941. Back row (l to r): S.Crabtree, W.H.Copson, G.A.Wilson, A.V.Pope, F.Earnshaw, H.J.Pedley, H.Ogden (scorer), J.M.Crossley. Front row: J.C.Lee, L.F.Townsend, G.Birbeck (president), G.B.Haley (captain), J.H.Roper (vice-president), A.Spencer. 27 Barnes took a hundred wickets for Saltaire in a season three times (including 122 at 4.10 in 1922, the League record) and twice took all ten in an innings for the club (including ten for 14 against Baildon Green in 1915, the league record until 1962) so that the club committee and its members were accustomed to getting good value for their money.