THE rugby league community from St Helens and beyond will gather at Parish Church this evening to pay their respects and listen to words of tribute to the town’s favourite adopted son – Tom van Vollenhoven.

Among the attendees will be former team-mates as well as players who came later, some of whom were tasked with the unenviable job following in those illustrious footsteps.

And there will be plenty of supporters who want to pay their final respects the Flying Springbok – the man that brightened many a Saturday afternoon in south Lancashire in the late 50s and 60s.

A good chunk of those taking a pew – myself included – will never have seen Voll play in the flesh but will nevertheless know just how significant a mark he has left on the town’s sporting landscape. And if you are like me you will have your parents to thank for having those exploits drummed into you from an early age.

It was the mid 70s and I was aged eight or nine, and still football obsessed, when I had my first lesson on Voll – by accident.

I was walking back from the Abbey outdoor with my mam when she suddenly got excited over what looked like a tatty piece of paper lying in the middle of Hammill Street.

She was so chuffed I thought she’d found a pound note. In fact it was behaviour bordering on swooning – something my mam was not easily prone to doing. Well, that is apart from one famous night at the Liverpool Empire when she stood on her seat in the dress circle repeatedly hollering ‘I love you!’ to Frank Ifield as he crooned ‘I Remember You’.

But that’s another story.

It was not a pound note, but smiling up from the floor was an old black and white photograph of a slender, crew-cutted figure with club tracksuit emblazoned with the letters ST H.

It was a bit dog-eared and one of the limestone chippings had carelessly punctured his right eye – inflicting even more damage to Voll’s visage than even Huddersfield’s Peter Ramsden had dished out with his infamous stiff arm.

The photo had even been autographed on the back – in pencil, but alas the misguided former owner sought to preserve it by scruffily tracing over it in blue biro.

None of that mattered; it was picked up and cherished like something that had fallen out of a prized family album.

And in the days, months and years to come I would hear all about Voll’s exploits – my mam in one ear, my dad in the other – slowly but surely inculcating with tales of the sporting hero of their 20s.

Over the years I heard it all about the Flying Springbok; what he had and did – and how his pace, swerve and majesty down the flank could electrify the crowds and leave them begging for more.

There was a list of the exploits too, like the length of the field try in the 1959 Championship Final against Hunslet at Odsal – one of three reputedly scored despite him having a gammy leg that day.

And of-course the length effort at Wembley in 1961, inter-passing with Ken Large, a crucial one in the win over Wigan.

When you watch footage, on YouTube, you can see why people around in the 1950s and 60s held Voll so dearly to their hearts.

For that generation of supporter who had witnessed Voll, and for that matter Murph, Vinty and Duggy Greenall, what came afterwards was always going to be a tough gig to follow.

So when I first started watching Saints I would run home, all excited after seeing Roy Mathias – one of my own first heroes – score a bagful only to have my bubble burst by my dad’s five little words.

“No Voll though, is he?”

And there never would be. Voll was up there on a pedestal and that is why the Parish Church will be packed out tonight with people celebrating the life of a legend and saying farewell in their own way.