A Hull of a journey

The 2023 Magic Weekend in Newcastle was full of great stories - perhaps none as unlikely, all things considered, as Josh Griffin's second-half hat-trick in the stirring win for Hull FC over Warrington Wolves which rounded things off.

Griffin's long road back from the spectacular and serious achilles injury he suffered in the Challenge Cup Semi Final at Leigh in 2021 would have been impressive enough.

But it's the family story which gives Josh and his two brothers, Darrell and George, an extra dimension - as three admirable Rugby League careers can all be traced back to a training session at Oxford Cavaliers some time late in the last century.

Josh was barely into his teens when his elder brother Darrell first dabbled in league, taking to it so naturally that he was invited to train with London Broncos. That led, via a suitably circuitous route involving a return to rugby union with Harlequins, to the family relocating to Yorkshire in 2003, when Darrell signed for Wakefield Trinity.

"I was 14 at the time," Josh recalled this week. "Mum and Dad had a pub down in Oxfordshire and when Darrell signed for Wakefield they sold up, packed up and we all moved. I'd only played rugby union at the time and even when we moved to Wakefield I played union with Sandal at first, before I started playing with Stanley Rangers at under-15s or 16s."

Josh followed Darrell to Belle Vue, and then briefly to Huddersfield and Batley, but remained very much in the shadow of his elder brother, who made more than 400 senior appearances in a 16-season career, while Josh reverted to union with Leeds Carnegie for a couple of years from 2012-14.

But in 2015, not only was he back in league, but younger brother George had also launched his career - with Hull KR in 2012 - and the three Griffins were united across the Pennines at Salford, under the coaching first of Iestyn Harris, and then of Ian Watson.

"We only had that one season together, but it was amazing really," Josh reflected. "To be training and playing in a full-time environment like that with your brothers - and then when you think we'd all come up from Oxfordshire to play Rugby League, it is a pretty unusual story."

George stayed at Salford for five seasons, making more than 100 appearances including the 2019 Grand Final. But Darrell left for Featherstone after that 2015 season - and 12 months later, Hull FC came calling for Josh, in the move which would lead to the best years of his career.

"It's had its challenges along the way," he says. "I wasn't too happy the first couple of years - I was spending three hours a day in the car getting to training and back, so that was hard work. It's been a lot better since we moved across to Hull.

"There's been some injuries too, especially the achilles - it was hard work coming back from that, harder than expected to be honest.

"But to win the Challenge Cup (in 2017) was the highlight of my career, and hopefully there are more highlights to come, now I'm back from the achilles. Tony (Smith) has been great for me - we've got a great relationship.

"When he first came in he said he'd give me the chance in the back-row. Obviously we had a few tough weeks there as a team, and the same for me personally. But Tony's been the same all through - he's very much got two different sides, one of them joking, but the other having the full respect of the dressing room.

"For me, at nearly 33, to be able to score a hat-trick at a Magic Weekend - I suppose there was a bit of relief in the way I celebrated the tries. It was such a big win for us, and great for the fans that we could give them a win like that in Newcastle."

Griffin also impressed Shaun Wane sufficiently to earn a place in his first England squad in 2021, although his World Cup hopes had been scuppered by the achilles injury, even before the tournament was postponed.

Now he is one of the elder statesmen not only of the Hull FC squad, but also of the Super League itself - a status that felt especially relevant at Magic Weekend, with Griffin joining a handful of players such as Sam Tomkins, James Roby, Ryan Hall, Louie McCarthy-Scarsbook and his Hull team-mate Danny Houghton whose careers stretched back to the early years of the concept.

Life has also changed off the field for Josh, who started a course in Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Hull in 2019, and is awaiting the confirmation of his result this summer. "That's been a challenge as well, one of the big stresses of my life for the last few years, going through Covid, the achilles injury, having another baby," he added.

He's now the father of two young boys, and it sounds like Rugby League could become familiar with a second generation of Griffins in the coming years, with Josh referring in conversation to his sister's children also showing enthusiasm and promise.

Obviously, there is more to this story than statistics, but with Josh making his 265th senior appearance at Magic - according to the invaluable and infallible Rugby League Record Keepers' Club - George on 230 and counting, and Darrell hanging up his boots in 2018 with more than 400, it's not impossible that the Griffin brothers will reach the 1,000 milestone in the next couple of years.

That would leave them as one of the most enduring sets of siblings in Rugby League history.

And it all started with a single training session with the Oxford Cavaliers.