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Teenager Iestyn was keen on Fax
You could almost tell the time by the phone calls.
Just before 4.30pm in the afternoon.
Perhaps he had just got in from school.....
The question was always the same, "Can I speak to Malcolm Reilly please?"
"Who's calling?"
"Iestyn Harris".
It was impossible not to remember a name like that.
And Reilly always took the call. It was the summer of 1993 and Reilly had been Halifax coach for six months.
He was clearing out a lot of the players he had inherited from Roger Millward and signing his own men.
One of the attractions was that he was also still the Great Britain coach and as such players thought that their chances of international selection may be higher if they were playing for him week in, week out.
Reilly also wanted to sign the cream of the game's youngsters and bring them through which is where young Iestyn came in.
He fancied playing for Malcolm but unfortunately had already signed for Warrington and the documents put "into the bottom of the safe".
This was pretty much standard practice throughout the game in those days where a lad couldn't sign as a professional until his 17th birthday.
It was the only way to secure a youngster's signature and Halifax did much the same thing with lads like Andy Hobson, Chris Chester and Oli Marns.
Harris wanted to sign for Halifax desperately to play under Reilly and regretted signing anything for Wire. He wanted Fax to seek legal advice and extricate himself from the deal at Wilderspool.
Another factor was that his best mate, Paul Highton, was on the verge of signing for Halifax.
Warrington thought, perhaps complacently, that the Royton based youngster would sign for them.
But Highton was determined not to sign for the Cheshire club who had just signed fellow Oldhamers Ian Knott and Paul Sculthorpe from Mayfield.
But as he later said, "I was fed up with being in Scully's shadow all the time."
By a stroke of luck Highton almost came gift wrapped for Reilly.
He had appointed Mick Slicker as Academy coach who knew Highton's father.
Slicker had been coaching the youth teams at Waterhead and recommended several players from there including Ian Sinfield (but not his brother Kevin!) and a prop called Barrie McDermott.....
And Reilly interviewed Nicky Kiss for the post of Alliance coach after Brendan Finn left to work at Huddersfield.
Kiss didn't get the job but he was advising Highton....and the youngster signed for Halifax alongside Lee Sculthorpe.
It was too late to get their Paul...as Phil Coventry found out when he asked: "Who's the tall lad who's always here at training wearing the England Schools trackie top?"
Reilly found it impossible to get Harris out of the deal he'd signed at Warrington.
But what might have been if he had managed it?
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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