Rugby League: Pendlebury and Hobbs leave Halifax

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

LAST SEASON'S coach of the year, John Pendlebury, and Halifax's football manager, David Hobbs, have both left the financially troubled club.

Both men were relieved of their duties before the club's successful application for a creditors voluntary agreement yesterday morning.

"We were then asked to come back on a month-to-month basis, but neither of us found that acceptable," said Hobbs.

"Hopefully there is now a way forward for the club with the debt lifted off it, but things there are going to have to change.

"John and I have been discussing it over the last month and seen the team that we built dismantled is just not tolerable."

Pendlebury, with Hobbs as his right hand man, steered Halifax to third place in Super League last season, but crippling cash flow problems this year have forced them to sell players such as Gavin Clinch and Chris Chester - both to Wigan - and they go into tomorrow's match at Salford in the bottom half of the table.

Marvin Golden will enjoy today's Super League outing to London far more than his last rather pointless trip eight weeks ago.

That was when the Leeds threequarter was the odd man out in their Challenge Cup final squad, reduced to sitting on the sidelines in a suit as his team-mates trounced today's opponents. "It was a kick in the teeth and I thought there was no future for me with the club," he recalled.

But that was before the Leeds prop Barrie McDermott delivered the necessary pep talk. "He phoned me up and reminded me that the same had happened to him at Old Trafford in the Grand Final, and look at him now," Golden said. "I've just got to buckle down."

He has done that so effectively that his outstanding form culminated in his first senior hat-trick against Castleford on Wednesday. "I love this club, it's the biggest club in the country," he said.

It is certainly the best on current form, as the demolition of Castleford underlined. "There's a real buzz about the place and when we play like that, it doesn't feel like anyone can stop us," Golden said.

London Broncos, with two morale-boosting wins under the new coaching combination of Les Kiss and Tony Rea, have named Shaun Edwards and Martin Offiah among their possible substitutes, but only one of them is likely to be used.

Leeds will remain loyal to the same 17 that beat Cas, with Kevin Sinfield starting in the second row and Adrian Morley on the bench, unless Darren Fleary passes a fitness test.