Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Tribute to Leeds Beckett honorary graduate
Harry received an Honorary Doctorate of Education in July and received a standing ovation from the graduating students at the ceremony, after collecting his award.
Harry Jepson spent a lifetime in the sport of rugby league and was instrumental in overseeing the strategic running of the sport as well as being a highly regarded and passionate ambassador for rugby league.
Leeds Rhinos Chief Executive Gary Hetherington commented: "Harry had a wonderful life and touched the lives of so many others. He knew people who had been involved in the formation of the game in 1895, and his death coincides with the 121st anniversary of the game he loved so much. He was a Rugby League legend, despite never playing the game and his passing is so sad."
Enlisted at the start of the Second World War, he joined the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment and then the Royal Army Service Corps, seeing active duty in North Africa and Southern Italy, before training as a school teacher on his return. Harry was seconded to the famous league-playing Bewerley Street School where he came under the wing of the Headmaster there, Edgar Meeks, who was also the Hunslet Chairman.
There, his involvement in his beloved game grew and he became involved in looking after the under 11s, then the under 13s and eventually the senior side at the school, whilst also becoming Secretary of the Hunslet Schools Rugby League Association and involved in County Rugby League at that level.
His teaching took him to Cottingley Junior Mixed School and then Rodley before ending his days in education as Deputy Head at Clapgate School, also in Leeds, for the final 14 years of his professional working life.
In 1963 Harry was appointed as Secretary by Hunslet, joining Leeds in the early 70s to work as Chairman Jack Myerscough’s right hand man and fixer with initial responsibilities for the second team.
Harry was elected as one of the inaugural members of the Rugby Football League Board of Directors, which took over the strategic running of the sport from the RL Council, on which he was Leeds’s representative from 1983. He became Football Director at Leeds in the mid-1980s, using his extensive knowledge and contacts worldwide to help rebuild the side. Harry chaired the Council meeting that discussed the offer to implement Super League and was heavily involved in the formation of French club Paris St Germain, who entered the competition on its launch in 1996; his passion for French Rugby League stoked by meeting Jean Galia at Headingley in 1934 when he was an impressionable schoolboy.
Harry was also Chairman of the Rugby League Conference, the competition which has spread the game throughout England, Scotland and Wales in the summer, the sides in the Premier Divisions contesting the Harry Jepson Trophy.