Bert Holcroft

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Bert Holcroft is an English former professional rugby league footballer, coach and writer on rugby league coaching.

Military service[]

Bert Holcroft joined the Royal Navy at aged 18 and was 20 when he served aboard the Flower-class corvette HMS Petunia. On 6 June 1944, HMS Petunia was among the naval force that took part in the invasion of Normandy, and on D-Day. HMS Petunia was an escort vessel for one of the assault convoys.^[1] During the assault the ship received a "mayday" from an American tank landing ship that had struck a mine. Holcroft was among those who saved 60 of the soldiers from the tank landing ship. In 2016 Holcroft was decorated with the Legion d'Honneur by the French government - an award Holcroft dedicated to the men saved on D-Day.^[2]

Rugby league[]

After the war Bert Holcroft played rugby league for amateur team Wigan Road Working Men's RLFC as well as the reserve team of Leigh. He also coached the B and Colts junior teams for Leigh.^[2]

In the 1960s Holcroft and his wife, Bridget, moved to Australia where he coached junior side to successive premierships in the in 1961 and 1962.^[3] Holcroft also coached the Bundaberg representative team where he introduced new training techniques relating to diet and weight training.^[4]

Holcroft was appointed as coach of Eastern Suburbs in the New South Wales Rugby League premiership in 1965. Easts were not a strong side at the time and under Holcroft they only won three games of the 32 played in the two seasons he was in charge; in 1966 Easts became the most recent (as of 2018) premiership team not to win a game during a season.^[5]

Over the years Holcroft has developed his training and fitness techniques into a series of books for rugby and football.

References[]

Sporting positions
Preceded by Nat Silcock, Jr. 1964	Coach Eastern Suburbs 1965–1966	Succeeded by Jack Gibson 1967–1968