September 2006

SEPTEMBER was a month for celebration for the city and its leading sporting team, Wakefield Trinity Wildcats, who secured Super League survival on the last day of the season. Bitter rivals Castleford Tigers were the unlucky ones who made the drop into the second tier of rugby league, ensuring the Wildcats stayed in the top flight in front of a sell-out 11,000 crowd. And even more good news followed with the announcement that new stadium talks were moving forward between the council and the club. Economically, survival was a boost to the whole city’s financial prospects with partnerships between the club and local businesses being forged almost immediately.

The city was also host to another high-profile royal visit when HRH Princess Anne flew in by helicopter to present Tilsatec, a division of yarn company Sirdar, a Queen’s Award for Innovation. HRH made her way to the factory on Flanshaw Lane to present the award, one of only four handed out in West Yorkshire, and officially open the company’s new production unit. And the princess spent over 20 minutes, more than the allotted time, on an in-depth tour of the new factory. The visit was made even more special for marketing manager, David Rawson, who was retiring from his post of 16 years on the same day.

There was a funeral with a difference held in Ossett when 20-year-old terminally ill Dixie Pickles had every intention of going to his own while still alive and kicking. Mr Pickles, of Kingsway, Ossett, was born with a rare condition called Diamond Blackfan Anaemia, which means his body is unable to produce red blood cells necessary to transport oxygen around the body. Doctors did not expect him to survive his childhood with the condition that affects only 700 people worldwide, but when he defied the odds and made it to the age of 12, following years of blood transfusions, he was given a bone marrow transplant and told he could expect to live a normal life. But an unexpected deterioration in his health caused by chemotherapy prior to the transplant and drugs he had to take alongside his transfusions, meant it was not to be. He said: “People who go to your funeral usually haven’t seen you in years and if you’re dead there is no point in them coming – this way I get to see them and there will be nothing sad about this occasion.”