In the latest of our Rugby League Icon features, looking back on some of the greats from yesteryear who have represented the club, Club Historian Bill Dalton looks back on the career of the club’s biggest stars of the early 1920s, winger Billy Stone.
Billy, born in Bream, Gloucestershire, came North to sign for Hull from the Gloucester club on Thursday 17th October 1919 and made his debut against Wakefield Trinity two days later.
He gained selection for the Northern Union Touring team to Australasia at the end of that first season, so his performances for Hull had to have been outstanding to receive that accolade.
He played in all six test matches (three each against Australia and New Zealand) and also in two tests against Australia back in England in the Autumn Ashes series of 1921. In his eight test matches he scored eight tries, including a first-half hat-trick in that first match in New Zealand.
Domestically, he played and scored a try in Hull’s successful Championship-winning team on 7th May 1921 against Hull Kingston Rovers. (He had had to miss the 1920 final because he was en route to Australia). He was also a member of the Hull FC team that won the Yorkshire Cup for the first time in November 1923.
He captained the side during the 1921-22 and 1922-23 campaigns, in a talented squad featuring the likes of Bob Taylor, Jim Kennedy, Billy Batten and all-time record appearance maker Ned Rogers.
In my early days of supporting Hull FC, I spoke with older supporters who had had the privilege of watching Billy Batten, Jack Harrison and Billy himself. It was from those conversations that I learned that Billy was reckoned at that time to be the fastest man ever seen to run with a Rugby ball!
Billy himself held the belief that the best way to the try-line was the shortest route and he employed all the classic skills of the great wingers – a step off either foot, the ability to ‘stand up’ the full-back and swerve round him and of course, that genuine speed that is a must for three-quarters in any generation of the game.
Billy went on to make some 222 appearances for Hull, scoring 149 tries and kicking 39 goals – a total of 525 points.
His try-tally ranks him in 8th place on the all-time try-scoring list. His best harvest of tries in a game was the five he scored against St Helens Recreation on 16th April 1921.
His 10 hat-ricks of tries places him joint third (with Ivor Watts), behind Clive Sullivan (20) and Alf Francis (13). Bearing in mind that these achievements were over only six years, I believe it would be reasonable to expect that had he not been compelled to retire early through injury in April 1925, that Billy would have continued to go on and forge one of the Hull FC great careers.
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