Keighley Cougars pay fitting tribute to Danny Jones by thrashing Coventry

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/may/10/keighley-cougars-danny-jones-tribute-coventry

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Keighley Cougars paid a fitting tribute to Danny Jones as they defeated Coventry Bears in front of a crowd of over 4,000 on an emotionally charged afternoon in West Yorkshire.

Just seven days after the 29-year-old collapsed and died after a cardiac arrest during Keighley’s game against London Skolars, the Cougars took to the field to carry on playing at the request of Jones’s family – and the performance they put in did him proud.

Fans from different rugby league clubs were encouraged to come out and support Jones’s wife and children in the wake of his tragic death. That support produced Keighley’s biggest crowd in years and bucket collections at the game also raised over £10,000 for his family.

Set up the day after his death last Monday, the Just Giving page has, with Gift Aid included, raised over £100,000 – with the Keighley chairman, Gary Fawcett, insisting he wants to see that total pass £1m before the end of the season.

On an afternoon where the action on the field was undisputedly an afterthought, the game was preceded by an emotional 15-minute ceremony to remember Jones, one of only five men to score 1,000 points for Keighley in their long history.

Jones’s wife, Lizzie, was in attendance along with five-month-old twins, Bobby and Phoebe, and she helped to release a net of balloons before the game to rapturous applause. The contest itself had been delayed for 15 minutes due to crowd congestion, with the 4,066 attendance well up on Keighley’s seasonal average of 702.

Former team-mates of Jones joined both sets of players on the field for a minute’s silence before kick-off, with the Keighley players huddled together in a show of solidarity. “We had to stick together and that huddle before the game brought us together for when the game kicked off,” said the Keighley player-coach, Paul March.

“I’m proud of how they’ve applied themselves; not just today but since the event in general. There’s 17 lads who took the field but there’s a whole group who are feeling it emotionally.

“Seeing people from different clubs has been great, and we’re going to do more and more fundraising for him – because he’s never going to leave us.

“ It’s good to win but it wasn’t about the result – it was about getting on the field to support Lizzie and the twins.”

Keighley never looked like doing anything but paying a fitting tribute to their team-mate.

Tries from Brendon Rawlins, the captain, James Feather, and March himself made it 18-0 before the game was 20 minutes old and although an Eddie Medforth brace got Coventry back into it, there was only ever going to be one outcome.

Hamish Barnes, Jesse Sheriffe and Paul White were next to cross for the Cougars to confirm the win before Olly Pursglove and two more tries for Feather, a close friend of Jones’s, rounded off the afternoon’s scoring.

Keighley Jesse Sheriffe; Gabriel, Barnes, Rikki Sherifffe, White; P March, Handforth; Law, Feather, Rawlins, Lynam, Pursglove, Lindsay. Interchange Jode Sheriffe, Patchett, Cherryholme, Kelly. Tries Rawlins, Feather (3), March, Barnes, Sheriffe, White, Pursglove. Goals Handforth 8.

Coventry Boulter; Rundle, Coleman, Medforth, Chapman-Carry; Poulton, Parker; Geurtjens, Hughes, Hall, Barratt, Thompson, Reid. Interchange Brown, Beddows, Cooper, Kelliher. Tries Medforth 2. Goal Graham.

Referee Dave Merrick. Att 4,066.