Steve Llewellyn

Prolific try-scorer in rugby league

Stewart Marshall Llewellyn, rugby league player and teacher: born Abertillery, Monmouthshire 29 February 1924; married (two sons); died St Helens, Merseyside 10 December 2002.

Steve Llewellyn was one of the greatest of the rugby league players who have adorned St Helens' wings over the years. There are only three players – Tom Van Vollenhoven, Les Jones and Alf Ellerby – who have scored more than his 240 tries for the club.

His rugby league career did not begin auspiciously. A former sergeant in the Welsh Guards, who had seen wartime action at Anzio and Monte Cassino, he signed from Abertillery in 1948 and made his début against Rochdale Hornets at Knowsley Road. Saints were beaten 9-8 in a shock result and Llewellyn was told by another Welshman in the side, Len Constance, that he would never make it in league and should return to the Valleys.

Although he was dropped the following week, he came back to score the first of his tries against Buslingthorpe Vale in the Challenge Cup. He became a fixture on Saints' right wing for the best part of a decade, perfectly built for the job at six foot and 13 stone. He was a regular and prolific try-scorer, with 38 in 1955-56 and 35 three years earlier ranking as his best seasons.

St Helens were emerging as a side capable of winning trophies. In 1953, they reached the final of the Challenge Cup at Wembley, and, although Llewellyn scored the try that levelled the scored just before half-time, he could not prevent Huddersfield's 15-10 victory. Saints had the compensation of winning the Championship that season, but the most memorable year – for Llewellyn and the club as a whole – was 1956.

In the Challenge Cup semi-final against Barrow at Wigan, the game was still scoreless after 80 minutes. Nine minutes into extra time, Llewellyn scored one of the best tries ever to take a side to Wembley, beating a series of would-be tacklers on a 60-yard solo run. He also figured prominently as Saints won the Cup for the first time a few weeks later. Halifax were firm favourites, but after a scoreless first 66 minutes, Saints blew the game wide open with tries from his opposite winger, Frank Carlton, from Llewellyn himself and from the legendary Alan Prescott.

Llewellyn's try was the jewel in a 13-2 victory, with a dash along the touchline putting him over in the corner – and with a place in St Helens folklore. By 1958, however, Saints had signed an even greater winger in the South African Van Vollenhoven, and Llewellyn, nearing his 34th birthday, decided to retire, with the game against Oldham at Knowsley Road destined to be the last of his 280 for the club.

He scored six tries in a match twice and, at a time when the competition for a place was fierce, played for Wales against England and France in 1948, again against England – a rare appearance on the left wing – in 1950 and against Other Nationalities in 1953.

In retirement he stayed in St Helens, a highly respected teacher of English and PE and later deputy head at two local secondary schools.

Dave Hadfield