Bert Holcroft

Bert Holcroft
Personal information
Full name Herbert Holcroft
Born (1925-08-08) 8 August 1925
Leigh, Greater Manchester
Coaching information

Club
Years Team Gms W D L W%
1965–66 Eastern Suburbs 36 3 1 32 8

Bert Holcroft (born 8 August 1925) is a former rugby league player, coach and author.

Military service

Bert Holcroft joined the Royal Navy at aged 18 and was 20 when he served aboard the Flower-class corvette HMS Petunia. On 6 June 1944, HMS Petunia was among the naval force that took part in the invasion of Normandy, and on D-Day. HMS Petunia was an escort vessel for one of the assault convoys.[1] During the assault the ship received a "mayday" from an American tank landing ship that had struck a mine. Holcroft was among those who saved 60 of the soldiers from the tank landing ship. In 2016 Holcroft was decorated with the Legion d'Honneur by the French government - an award Holcroft dedicated to the men saved on D-Day.[2]

Rugby

After the war Holcroft played rugby leageue for amateur team Wigan Road Working Men's RLFC as well as the reserve team of Leigh. He also coached the B and Colts junior teams for Leigh.[2]

In the 1960s Holcroft and his wife, Bridget, moved to Australia where he coached junior side Murwillumbah Brothers to successive premierships in the Tweed Rugby League in 1961 and 1962.[3] Holcroft also coached the Bundaberg representative team where he introduced new training techniques relating to diet and weight training.[4]

Holcroft was appointed as coach of Eastern Suburbs in the New South Wales Rugby League premiership in 1965. Easts were not a strong side at the time and under Holcroft they only won three games of the 32 played in the two seasons he was in charge; in 1966 Easts became the most recent (as of 2018) premiership team not to win a game during a season.[5]

Over the years Holcroft has developed his training and fitness techniques into a series of books for rugby and football.

References

  1. ↑ "HMS PETUNIA (K 79) - Flower-class Corvette". 31 May 2011. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  2. 1 2 Maxwell, Kelsey (31 May 2016). "Former rugby ace helped save 60 drowning soldiers on D-Day". Leigh Journal. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
  3. ↑ "Brothers legends set to celebrate". Tweed Daily News. 13 September 2011.
  4. ↑ Barnett, Murray (2015). For the Love of the Game. Boolarong. p. 241. ISBN 978-1925236088.
  5. ↑ "Who were the worst NRL teams of all time?". Daily Telegraph. 4 November 2015.
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