Hang this photo of Dean Sampson flattening Willie Poching in the Louvre

In the depths of the off-season it’s always great to catch up with the people you go to games with or bump into familiar faces that you otherwise only tend to see on the terraces. The one small issue is that, without anyone to call a cheating bastard, or a team selection to criticise from the coach you swore would sort things out, the conversation can dry up a little. Fortunately, after a couple of drinks, the self-appointed Peter Kay of your group will inevitably ask “who remembers when...” and then the misty-eyed nostalgia begins to flow.

One such exchange I had recently led to a discussion about what were the best photographs from Castleford Tigers games. Joe Westerman’s face after teammate Liam Watts was controversially sent off against Wigan got a mention; likewise another spectacular shot of the entire Cas team stood behind the posts in a red mist after a Wigan fan threw a flair on the pitch — a great image that has a Hollywood feel to it. The one that came to my mind, however, was a little older. If a picture says a thousand words, then at least half of the things this image is trying to express would be unprintable.

With all the drama of a renaissance masterpiece, the photograph depicts Castleford legend Dean Sampson standing over a crumpled — and recently flattened — Willie Poching, while a teammate looks on in horror after Sampson took the law into his own hands following a late hit on his half-back. Loyal clubman, rugby league renegade, and Castleford cult hero, it’s hard to look back at anything Dean Sampson did negatively through black and amber-tinted glasses. Even his more, shall we say, vigilante shenanigans.

We all do it. Whether you’re a Leeds fan who likes to reflect on Barrie McDermott as a loveable rogue, Lee Radford as a cheeky scamp on Humberside, or Mick Cassidy only ever dishing out justice for Wigan, the list goes on. Don’t pretend you don’t have a player whose misdemeanours you have airbrushed out of existence.

After a search online, I found the game on YouTube and watched it in all its glory — a real throwback to a different era when Super League was slightly more, erm, physical than I recalled. It’s worth a watch to remind yourself what a local derby from the early noughties in Super League was like. It also features classic commentary from Mick Morgan, and a repeat of his iconic “ah cart speyk” after the challenge from Poching leaves Mick and everyone else in the stadium utterly speechless. Unfortunately the hit happens so late the camera has moved on, but that’s where, thankfully, the photograph caught the culmination of events — even if Morgan thought it was Poching, not Sampson, who should have been sent off.

What a photograph it is. The staging, the expressions, the composition, and that pointed finger in particular, combine to create something worthy of the finest art gallery. Ultimately, just like any great image from history, it serves a purpose depicting something that in 2025 seems unthinkable but was quite normal at the time the finger pressed the shutter.

To witness something like this on a rugby league pitch these days is as likely as seeing a public beheading painted by Caravaggio in your local on a Saturday night. They are both of their time. It’s a real blast from the past, and takes us all back to a point when — judging by the quantity of ‘Bring Back The Biff’ compilations on YouTube from the early noughties — this was part and parcel of the game.

‘Diesel’ Dean embodied the early Super League era for Cas fans in a way players rarely do these days. A one-club man with over 400 appearances for the the Tigers — including two Frank Sinatra-esque comebacks to cover a couple of injury crises — his no-nonsense approach and fierce loyalty made him a Castleford legend. In a quickfire Q&A with BBC Sport in 2003, Sampson was asked, “If you could be someone else for the day, who would you be?” He replied, “In all honesty, I’m perfectly happy being myself.” That self-assured aura was vital in making himself Castleford's enforcer. The photo encapsulates all of this, and Deano in a nutshell, while simultaneously exemplifying everything you’d expect to see back in the early Super League era.

Snaps of rugby league games from yesteryear are no different to looking at baby photos — sometimes you cringe, sometimes you bemoan the fashion choices, and sometimes you just want to set them on fire and never see them again. Yet just like grandad’s weird tracksuit in that picture from 1984, it’s hard to say how distasteful it is because everyone else was wearing one too, so it’s pointless criticising. It’s not to be looked at as better now or worse then. It’s just different.

Throughout his career, Sampson had more cards than Hallmark, and in 2025 would undoubtedly have his own private parking spot at the RFL’s disciplinary HQ. But without context, the image in question doesn’t talk about the standards or practices that were expected at the time, or the fact that people would take it for a given in a local derby or go home disappointed without seeing ‘a bit of passion’ during a fixture in which those on the pitch were demanded to put local pride first, and player welfare much further down their list of priorities. I’m not sure welfare was a word in Deano’s vocabulary when you look at the disregard he had for himself with his bullocking, bulldozing playing style. Team first, self second. That attitude must have been reassuring for anyone lining up alongside him, never mind the fact that, judging by how he left Poching, he’d have been just as comfortable in a boxing ring. Rumble in the Jungle indeed.

Photos like this serve as a ‘Proustian Rush’ for people of a certain age in the WF10 postcode. Triggered by the taste of a cake taking him back to a specific moment in his childhood, Marcel Proust spun out the longest novel in history. A photo like this, meanwhile, can transport a rugby league fan back to a precise moment stood on the terrace: the smells from the burger van as fresh as ever, the music played when a try was scored ringing in your ears, hands gripped tightly to the railing on the terraces with the crowd chanting, “Deano! Deano!” It all comes rushing back, even if it does make me question just how accurately I remember it all.

But that’s the thing — the memory plays tricks, while a camera never lies. And sometimes it will tell the brutal truth: that Dean Sampson once absolutely flattened Willie Poching. ⬧