Warriors gather for Coulman farewell

Old warriors from both sides of what used to be The Great Divide joined early on Monday afternoon to pay their last respects to one of their own, Mike Coulman.

The funeral of the ex-Moseley prop who played for England and the Lions in both codes took place at Rochdale Crematorium at 1.20pm on Monday, some three weeks after his death shortly before what would have been his 79th birthday.

Coulman, below, long afforded legendary status at Salford for whom he played almost 500 matches, switched to League shortly after the 1968 Lions’ tour of South Africa. No sooner had he replaced the redoubtable Ulsterman Syd Millar for the third Test in Cape Town than injury forced him into an early exit.

A front row forward who ran like a sprinter, outrageously so for those who struggled to shift from one scrum to the next, made Coulman upwardly mobile some 20 years before such assets became fashionable. In League his explosive concoction of pace and power wreaked havoc wherever he played.

A policeman who had to give up his job when he turned pro, Coulman is the ninth member of the ’68 Lions to pass on: four Irishmen, three English, one Welsh and one Scot.

They are in chronological order: Jock Turner (Scotland, aged 48), Ken Goodall (Ireland, 59), Mick Doyle (Ireland, 62), Jeff Young (Wales, 63), Barry Bresnihan (Ireland, 66), John Pullin (England, 79), Tony Horton (England, 81), Tom Kiernan (Ireland, 83).