Professional Career
Wigan were alerted to him when he was serving with the Royal Signals at Catterick and when he made his 'A' team debut a crowd of 8,000 assembled inside Central Park, Wigan. He made his first team debut against Barrow in November, 1953 scoring a try.
For the next fifteen seasons he was a living legend and played his final game in 1968. With Boston on the right wing and Eric Ashton playing at right centre, Wigan had one of the best combinations in the history of the game. Both players scored doubles in Wigan's 1959–60 Northern Rugby Football League season Championship final victory. Boston had an incredible turn of speed for a big man and had the ultimate side step and was also able to hand off opponents with apparent ease.
Boston also played 31 games for Great Britain and was the first player to score four tries in a game against New Zealand. He was the first non-white player to be selected to tour and added to his 478 tries for Wigan.
Billy Boston also represented Great Britain while at Wigan between 1952 and 1956 against France (1 non-Test match).
With BBC television coverage increasing in the late-1950s, armchair fans as well as terrace supporters were able to witness Billy Boston in action. He beat Johnny Ring's record of 368 tries and went on to score a record 478 for Wigan, a record that will probably never be broken. Boston also twice equalled the then Wigan club record of seven tries in game, only surpassed since by Martin Offiah and Shaun Edwards.
Billy Boston played Centre in Wigan's 9–13 victory over Workington Town in the 1957–58 Challenge Cup final at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 10 May 1958.
Boston scored a total of 571 tries in his career which he finished with Blackpool Borough. After retiring from the game he took over the running of The Griffin public house near Central Park until his retirement.
The Billy Boston stand at Central Park was named in his honour. Similarly the East Stand at the DW Stadium was officially named after Billy Boston in the year 2009.
Read more about this topic: Billy Boston
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or career:
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)