Career Record for Featherstone
Appearances			Tries	Goals	Drop Goals	Points
Total	Start	Sub
57	57	0	12	7	0	50

A Featherstone man was the first man to claim a try in a Challenge Cup final at Wembley.  The year was 1929, that man was Jim Rudd and the try was disallowed!  He was the last of the players from that game to pass away and his ashes were scattered at Wembley in 1998 at his family's request.

Jim Rudd graduated to the senior team at Featherstone via the juniors of George Street School. His first game in the first team was on Christmas Day in 1923 when he was Rovers' only try-scorer in a 7 - 16 defeat at Hunslet.  Rovers had only entered the Rugby League as a senior club in 1921 and from the beginning had struggled to make ends meet.  On the pitch they steadily rose up the table from 23rd in his first season (1923-24) to astonishing third in his last (1927-28).  No one got rich playing for Rovers - this was an era of massive deprivation, not least in the mining areas, and culminated in the General Strike of 1926. Winning first team pay was only thirty bob, and until the 1927-28 campaign Jim was usually a second-teamer, having to play second fiddle to county player Charlie Annable.

In the 1927-28 season however Jim won a regular place in first team as Rovers really shook the Rugby League establishment with a combination of good football and fail-safe defence to finish third behind Swinton and Leeds.  A thrilling 15-12 victory in the semi at Headingley took Featherstone through to the Championship Final and a clash with Swinton at Oldham on 5 May 1928. Rovers fought hard enough but Jim had to be satisfied with a runners-up medal as Swinton won 11-0. The Lions thus became the third and final team to lift the traditional All Four Cups.

That game at Watersheddings proved to be Jim's last for Rovers his career at Post Office Road had yielded 57 appearances, in which he had scored a dozen tries and kicked seven goals.  The following season Rovers sold him to Dewsbury, just in time for him to take part in one of the most significant events in the game's history.  The Wembley Final Programme indicates that Jim was 25 at the time of the game. At 5 feet 4 inches and 10st 12 lbs, he was a stereotypical scrum-half.  His pen picture was remarkably terse merely saying: 'Born in Featherstone. Has all the pluck associated with men from this colliery town of Yorkshire'.