Career Record for Featherstone
Appearances			Tries	Goals	Drop Goals	Points
Total	Start	Sub
112	112	0	15	1	0	47

Laurie Gant joined Featherstone in March 1948 from Wakefield Trinity’s A team. Rovers were languishing near the bottom of the league and had lost twenty-one matches on the trot. He made his debut against Huddersfield on 28 March, his first senior match at the age of 26. It did not stop the rot immediately but a week later, victory by 12-8 at Hull KR was greeted with acclaim.  Apart from ending an unenviable record of twenty-three consecutive defeats, it gave the players their first bonus which had been offered since Christmas.

It was in the following season that Gant made his mark. The Rovers pack at that time was young and raw, and from the outset his maturity provided the framework for the younger players to feed off and learn from. He was a natural leader who gave 100 per cent and when Freddie Miller and Eric Batten arrived, the experience was moulded into an effective combination.

The culmination of this was 1952, when the Rovers reached Wembley for the first time with historic wins over Wigan and Leigh. He was the driving force of the pack and never more so than in the semi-final game with Leigh. He literally left his sick bed to play on that bleak Saturday afternoon and what a sight it was to see him matching the might of the very talented Leigh pack. He was dubbed a 'pocket Hercules' after that game, but that had been the tag given to him by Rovers fans since he arrived. What he lacked in inches (5ft 7.5in and 14st 91b), he compensated for with a bulky frame and an indomitable spirit.

He headed the club try-scoring list in 1950/51 with eight tries (the team finished third from bottom) and the one scored at Huddersfield prompted this report 'a  typical bulldozing effort which makes supporters wish that he could infuse some of his swashbuckling directness in his colleagues'. He played in every position in the pack, but was best placed in the second row. It came as a surprise when he was transferred to Hunslet in October 1952 after playing what was his last match for Rovers against the Australian touring team on 1 October 1952.

He retired from active football in 1954 and then had successful careers in refereeing and coaching, both as rugby league national coach and at club level. His appointment as coach at Featherstone in 1966 was the prelude to another return to Wembley as he masterminded an average Rovers side to unlikely but decisive victories over the top Yorkshire clubs Bradford, Wakefield, Castleford and Leeds to reach the RL Cup Final in 1967. Full credit was given for his part in bringing the Cup back to Featherstone for the first time, which compensated for the disappointment of 1952.  He resigned as coach in 1970.  He was awarded the MBE for his services to rugby league in 1981, and was mentioned in dispatches for his valour in the D-Day landings in 1944.  Some player, some man.

For details of his coaching career, see here

Biography by Ron Bailey