Tributes as star of Another Bloody Sunday Doncaster rugby documentary dies at 85

Tom Morton, a former club secretary and general manager of Doncaster Rugby Club, featured heavily in the 1981 Yorkshire Television film Another Bloody Sunday which focused on the struggles of the ailing club, known as The Dons, and their crumbling Tattersfield ground.

The film, which is available to watch in full online, saw the Bentley-based rugby club attempting to end a record breaking losing streak.

Son Gary said: “My dad kept the club going through some hard times, often paying wages and other costs out of his own pocket.”

Born in Doncaster in September 1937, Mr Morton lived at 26 Bentley Road until 1962 when he married - and moved the vast distance of four terraced houses away to number 32 Bentley Road!

Added Gary: “He lived there until a year ago when he needed professional care due to brain tumour which eventually took him from us last Monday.”

His involvement with the Dons started in the 70s as club secretary later becoming general manager."

His place in Doncaster’s history was cemented in the early 1980s when the TV cameras turned up at Tattersfield – now a piece of wasteland on the entrance to Bentley – to document the relentless struggles of the then town’s hapless Rugby League team.

Added Gary: “It is still watched and talked about and recognises what he did to keep the Dons going back then.”

“During some desperate times back then he was responsible for the club’s continuing existence.”

The documentary sees Tom telling the cameras he has just received a copy of the Guinness Book of Records featuring the Dons’ losing streak.

He says his team has an entry for most games without a win.

What follows in Barry Cockcroft’s wonderful portrait of the club’s last four fixtures of the 1981 season is a mixture of the bleak, the poignant and the hilarious.

The scattered devoted few at the aptly named Tattersfield watch as Doncaster and Hull legend Tony Banham finally comes up trumps.

One of a series of programmes, Once in a Lifetime, Another Bloody Sunday was put out by Yorkshire Television during the 1970s and ‘80s and mostly directed and produced by Barry Cockcroft, best known for his four films about Pennine recluse Hannah Hauxwell.

From its founding as a professional rugby league club in 1951, Doncaster mostly struggled in the lower regions of the leagues, but surprisingly didn’t finish bottom the season in which this was filmed.

The team they eventually beat, Huyton, did.

Playing at Tattersfield between 1953 and 1995 the club later moved to the Meadow Court Stadium in Stainforth before sharing with Doncaster Rovers at Belle Vue and then the Keepmoat Stadium, now the Eco Power Stadium.

The club reached the top flight in the 1990s, but the team collapsed into administration and later re-emerged as Doncaster Dragons.

You can watch the 53-minute Another Bloody Sunday documentary HERE