Agar's odyssey: Being here is a real 'pinch me' moment

It's May 7, 1983 and Allan Agar’s nervous face is beamed around the rugby league world via blurry satellite images as Featherstone Rovers eke their way to one of the greatest upsets in Challenge Cup final history, 14-12 over star-studded Hull.

His son Richard is just 11 years old, straining to understand what a cacophonous 84,969 fans at Wembley Stadium are so excited about.

Thirty-seven years later, he would experience an echoey spin on that euphoria, taking Leeds to the Royal Box at the refurbished Wembley to lift the same trophy - in front of a COVID-enforced empty house, 17-16 over Salford.

“Unfortunately, my dad’s in a home now with dementia,’ Agar told NRL.com at Resorts World in Las Vegas, where he is serving as an assistant coach of the New Zealand Warriors for the season-opener against Canberra at Allegiant Stadium.

“He’s not seen or understood Challenge Cups and things like that. You know, two guys from Featherstone... I’ve been told we’re the only father and son to coach Challenge Cup winning teams which is a really cool record for our family and our village.”

Richard can only imagine what his 75-year-old father would think of his son coaching in Las Vegas.

For people like Richard, born into staunch rugby league families who saw the game struggle for profile and respect their entire lives, the four-game spectacular at a venue worth US$1.9 bullion is far from just a jolly.

It’s a deeply emotional experience, a feeling of deliverance from a degree of scorn and snobbery that lasted generations.

This is particularly the case in England but also in New Zealand.

And it’s impossible not to reminisce about those who came before and never got the see the sport stand on its own Olympus for a day - or in Agar’s case, about his first ever rugby league training session which he remembers vividly.

“I was just thinking about it the other day: as a seven-year-old I trained at Purston Park, for those who know that part of the world,” he said.

“It pissed it down. It was midweek. There were about eight of us there. I think the next training session there were probably 30 of there. I can remember that evening really, really well.

“My dad was my first coach.

“To be here in Las Vegas, in the NRL, on a stage like this - it is a real ‘pinch me’ moment.

“It’s something that I wouldn’t take for granted, for which I’ll forever be grateful and it highlights what an unbelievable job off-field the direction the NRL is going in now, with the people running it.

“Sport administration, like being a prime minister, is very difficult in this day and age. It’s hard to survive sometimes but they’re not just surviving, they’re thriving.”

Agar feels he has the ghosts of all those with whom he played, coaches and met along the way with him this week in Las Vegas as he carts his clipboard to and from the coaches' box usually occupied by highly-paid icons of American sport.

“I feel like I represent Travellers Saints and Featherstone Lions, if I’m honest,” he said.

“That’s my junior club and I’m fully aware of all the juniors that are playing either Super League or NRL who have come from my club.

"We’ve got a young guy making his way at Castleford now, Fletcher Rooney... I’m friends with his father.

“I’d like to think it’s an example that you can dream. I didn’t have an extensively high-profile playing career. 

“But I’ve always been really passionate about the sport and on a personal level I found myself in a position now working in the NRL and going to places I only watched on television when I was a young boy is leaving the dream.

“We can professional and wheel out bog standards lines but 53-years-old and my dreams have come late... "

And so have the dreams of so many from Richard’s generation, his father’s, and four more before that - all the way back to 1895 in another Yorkshire town called Huddersfield. 

Now Agar hopes the Australian game can help the sport realise its potential in its birthplace.

“It would be great at some point if the NRL at some stage did get involved in Super League.”