Profile

There can be no doubt that any player in the whole history of Oldham RLFC has made his presence felt or left an impression quite like Joe Ferguson.

A native of ‘Ellenboro’, Cumberland, Joe signed for Oldham in time for the 1899 season, after having been invited by the club to attend the previous season’s Challenge Cup Final. This was when Oldham defeated Hunslet and the effect was enough to convince the young Ferguson his future lay with Oldham in the face of competition from Halifax.

Joe was a forward, this being in the days when the individual “pack” positions were much less defined than they are today, but as the game evolved he became a front row man, playing both hooker and prop. A strong robust performer on both attack and defence, he was also a fine goalkicker and on no fewer than eleven occasions he was the top Oldham marksman and would occasionally play at full back. Always a player for the big occasion, he once landed a mighty drop goal from the half way line, to clinch a 4 – 3 victory over Swinton in the Lancashire Cup final of 1910.

He had the distinction of representing his country at 15, 13 and 12-a-side rugby football, the latter being an experimental idea played at Wigan against Other Nationalities in 1904. Surprisingly he never got to play in a test rated international, but he did captain “England” to victory over the 1907 New Zealand tourists despite the fact that the “All Golds”, won the test series against the full British team. Joe was also an automatic selection for the first tour in 1910, but declined to go for business reasons.

At county level his record is second to none, having been capped 15 times by his adopted Lancashire and, after a change in the qualification rules, appearanced 31 times for Cumberland. He also became the first captain to raise aloft the Infirmary (Law) Cup when it was introduced for competition between Oldham and Rochdale in 1921.

The only domestic honour to elude him was a Challenge Cup winners medal, although he played in two finals in 1907 and 1912. With over 600 appearances for the club he is over 150 ahead of his nearest rival and but for the First World War his total would have been approaching the 700 mark. His last game was at St Helens on April 14th, 1923 at the age of forty-four.

Was Joe the greatest “Roughyed / Bear” of all time ? Many people think so and on the evidence of the above details few could disagree.