The death has been announced of former Workington Town centre Vince Fawcett at the age of 55.
Fawcett, who played his early rugby with the Middleton amateur club, signed for Leeds on his 17th birthday.
He was at that age when he made his senior Leeds debut coming on three times that season from the bench.
The 1989/90 season was his breakthrough campaign when he played 26 times for the senior side and scored eight tries.
It resulted in him winning three caps for Great Britain Under-21s, scoring three times.
Over the next four seasons he only played a total of 35 times, four of them off the bench, and he asked for a transfer. Leeds responded by putting him on the list at £60,000 but there was no apparent interest.
At the time Workington Town had got themselves back into the First Division and with the incentive of the launch of Super League, the Derwent Park club was building up a competitive squad.
They eventually taled-down the asking price to £22,000 and Fawcett started his Town career with a home game against his former club Leeds in the opening game of the season.
He had a superb debut, completely blocking out Kevin Iro and it was only when Fawcett left the field with injury that Iro ran in two tries to turn the game Leeds’ way.
Fawcett then went on to have the best season of his career with 16 tries in 33 games but the following season, although he scored eight tries in 17 appearances the team only won five games.
At the end of that second season he tries his luck in Australia and had two successive stints with the Parramatta Eels.
When he returned home in 1997 he joined Oldham and scored three tries before joining Warrington in 1998 – two tries in four starts and nine sub appearances.
His final season was spent with Wakefield Trinity in 1999 when he added three more tries to his tally from 13 starts and one off the bench.
It was at the end of that season, just shy of his 29th birthday that he decided to hang up his boots.
Fawcett is highly regarded by Town fans of the 1990s – a strong-running, hard tackling centre capable of mixing it with the best.
