A MEMBER of one of Cumberland’s greatest county championship rugby league sides has died at the age of 76.

Cleator Moor-born Aidan Breen played in a star-studded Cumberland team which won the championship in 1959 against the might of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Team mates included legends such as Dick Huddart, Brian Edgar, Ike Southward and his great friend Geoff Robinson.

He also had the honour of representing Cumberland and Westmorland at rugby union.

At club level, Aidan was a key figure in one of RL’s best club sides of the era – Huddersfield – before joining the Red Devils of Salford bristling with stars of both codes.

Aidan played on the right wing – the position he occupied for his club side Huddersfield in the 1962 Challenge Cup final only to lose to Wakefield Trinity.

But the following week at Bradford’s Odsal Stadium, Huddersfield got their revenge over Trinity in the RL Championship Final. Aidan gained the considerable consolation of a coveted winners’ medal.

Aidan Breen’s early childhood was at Cleator Moor before the family moved to Barrow where his father Jimmy, began a notable career as a rugby league writer.

Aidan opposed all-time great wingers like Billy Boston, Mick Sullivan and Tom Van Vollenhoven but was probably the only one to be taught their rugby by monks in a monastery - Belmont Abbey boarding school in Hereford.

His first love was union, winning four full county caps for Cumberland and Westmorland after first representing his county at schoolboy level.

After his distinguished Huddersfield league career Breen went to Salford in 1965 teaming up with Cumbrian great Paul Charlton and a host of other stars such as David Watkins, Mike Coulman, Colin Dixon and Chris Hesketh.

Three years later when an Achilles tendon injury ended his professional playing career Aidan coached Salford University before being persuaded to play union again for Ashton-under-Lyne but with Rugby Union’s ‘Berlin Wall’ cross code regulations still in force it was under the assumed name of Alan Haigh.

Glowing reports actually led to Lancashire RU county selectors coming to run the rule over Breen but for some reason ‘Alan Haigh’ never seemed to be on the field.

Aidan also had the ‘distinction’ of being sent off in a union game as an ex-league pro playing under another assumed name – this time Albert Schweitzer. Team mate Johnny Weismuller had vouched for his credentials – Johnny was none other than Geoff Robinson, ex-Whitehaven, Oldham and Rochdale. He was also ordered off.

Aidan lived with his wife Elizabeth at Uppermill, near Oldham.

He is also survived by daughter Lisa, grand-daughter Sophie, sister Maureen and younger brother Chris, a former Whitehaven News journalist and now editor of the Cumbrian Guide Media Group.