AS the big freeze continues and Liverpool St Helens wait to see if Saturday’s encounter at Tyldesley will go ahead, club president Ray French has recalled the winter of 1962-63.

“The weather was so bad there was hardly any sport between December 22 and March 9,” he said.

Mind you it wasn’t all doom and gloom. French recalls two innovative attempts to ensure that matches went ahead.

The first was by Widnes Rugby League Club who placed a chemical – GLX5 – on their pitch to make it playable.

French explained: “It came from the local ICI Chemical Works.

“At first it appeared to work and Widnes played on while others watched. However, the Naughton Park pitch gradually became a black sea of mud and dead grass with the players complaining about a strange itching sensation when they went into the after-match bath. The idea was scrapped but the club laid a new pitch for the following season.

The second bright idea came from the BBC broadcaster himself when at Cowley School where the school rugby team were due to take on a touring side. Desperate for the game to be played, French enlisted the help of the entire first year intake of boys.

“I lined them all up on the dead ball line, there were about 100 of them” he said, “and instructed them all, in groups, to roll a snowball to the other end of the pitch, a plan which I hoped would take all the snow off the pitch.”

Jubilantly he recalls: “It worked – but only up to a point.

“The lads rolled their snowballs and they got bigger and bigger leaving the grass beneath like a soft green carpet.”

Sadly however, he also remembers: “They only got as far as the halfway line because the snowballs were then so big that no group could push them any further.

“I was left with 15 giant snowballs resting in the middle of the pitch and we had no matches for a further two weeks until they had melted.

“They became known as French’s follies!”