George Standidge firmly fell into the latter group and will be celebrating his 60th birthday this Saturday with a party at Hanging Heaton cricket club in Dewsbury.
No doubt the usual "Heavy Woollen" area suspects will be in attendance including Tony Halmshaw, Steve Smith and "The Cat" aka Dave Callon, all former Thrum Hallers of some longevity.
Standidge himself only made 56 appearances for the club between October 1980 when he arrived from Hunslet and the last game of the 1981/82 season.
But he certainly made an impression.
Those were the days when scrums were fierce encounters and often took two or three efforts before the ball came out to the satisfaction of the referee and the odd flare-up was routine!
Standidge more than held his own in those encounters and was more than capable of taking matters further as extensive damage to the away dressing room door and frame at Hunslet proved after a dismissal there!
He arrived at Halifax at a difficult time for the club.
Promotion had been achieved under Maurice Bamford after two seasons of success in Division Two and in various knockout cup competitons and only three years after the debacle of losing at home to amateur side Cawoods.
But Bamford had gone in controversial circumstances – the coach himself is to this day only too ready to mention internal politics and the destabilising efforts of one or two players – to be replaced by Mick Blacker and Kenny Loxton.
And the team was struggling to make the transition to top flight football.
Standidge was signed to add some beef to the pack after Halifax had lost six consecutive games and the size of the transfer fee - £6000 – reflected how highly the club rated him.
And he never let them down.

• Another forward celebrating a landmark soon will be David Larder.

The former Keighley, Rochdale and Leigh second row will be making his 100th appearance for the club when he next steps out onto the pitch.
The last player to reach this landmark was James Haley last year; the last to reach 200 was of course Damian Gibson in the penultimate match of 2008.
And it's a landmark that "Dids" would have reached sooner but for a serious ankle injury a couple of years ago which mystified many doctors until a specialist surgeon in Sheffield came up with a solution and for that broken jaw sustained against Leigh in mid season last year which led to a "will he-won't he" guessing game about his comeback as the play-offs progressed.
Larder has scored 35 tries in the process but one effort which was disallowed caused most anguish; his late "touchdown" at Castleford in the final game of 2005.
If awarded it would have taken Fax to a Grand Final.....