Eagles Foundation launch Heritage Project

02/09/2021

37 years ago, Sheffield Eagles played their first game against Rochdale Hornets, coming back from behind to win 29-10. 

Whilst 37 years is not a symbolic anniversary, The Eagles Foundation has chosen today, the club’s birthday, to launch an exciting project which all fans and followers of Sheffield Eagles and fans of Rugby League, with an interest in the history and heritage of the game, will be excited by!

The Eagles Foundation is working with the Sheffield Eagles Rugby League Club to develop a funding application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund. 

If the funding bid is successful a project officer would be employed to coordinate all the activities which will include researching archives to centrally gather information about the club, digitising key documents and items from the club’s past such as photographs, programmes, season tickets, videos and building an online database and museum to be made available to all. 

The officer will also collect and share stories from officials, players, supporters and coaches from throughout the life of the club, ensuring these stories are preserved for generations to come.

 Eagles fans will be familiar with the club’s history, a tale of highs and lows from winning the Challenge Cup Final to the merger the following year and many tales of major wins and adversity throughout the club’s existence. 

These fans know that we have some remarkable stories to capture, including of our nomadic existence and all of the “home” grounds and stadiums we have played at, how the club was originally formed, the adversity overcome and where history repeated itself at the start of the millennium as the new club was born. 

There are thousands of stories of the many players from around the world who played for the club and the supporters who have been with the club at various times on its 37 year journey.  

How can you help?

To help shape and strengthen the bid, as well as showing the National Lottery Heritage Fund the support for the project, we’d like your help. You may be an existing (or former supporter) of the Sheffield Eagles, you may not be a supporter but have an interest in researching stories and history, you may work for an organisation that would like to get involved in the project or you may just be interested in history and want to be involved. 

Everyone can help develop and support the project in a number of ways:

Online Survey: Complete a short online questionnaire that will help us understand more about the people that could get involved and also give you a chance to share some of your ideas about the project. The questionnaire closes at 9am on Monday 27th September. The questionnaire can be found at https://bit.ly/EaglesHeritage

Email: Email us with your thoughts or ideas about the project, anything we’ve missed, any questions you have, whether it’s something you’d like to get involved in or just to say you support the project. You can email to enquiries@eaglesfoundation.co.uk

Discussions: Have further discussions with representatives of the Eagles Foundation about the project, or if you have problems submitting an online questionnaire, by emailing enquiries@eaglesfoundation.co.uk

 Projects of this type and scale take some time to develop and there is no guarantee that the funding application will be successful. The bid is being developed by volunteers, working around their other commitments and has the wholehearted support of the club. It is hoped that an application could be submitted by the end of October with a decision made by early January 2022, with the project starting in time for the beginning of the 2022 Rugby League season.