STUCK for a gift idea for this festive time of year?

Well, you won't go far wrong by heading to your nearest book-shop and tackling a tome co-written by an ex-Evening Press chronicler of the Wasps.

Former Evening Press rugby league writer Peter Smith, together with fellow journalist, Phil Caplan, have penned '100 Greats Leeds Rugby League Club'.

It trains a sharp focus on whom they reckon to be the top 100 players and personalities associated with the club in its incarnations as Loiners, and now Rhinos, over the past 111 years.

As the authors confess any list is bound to feature 'contentious omissions' and 'surprising selections'. But the duo deserve praise for the eloquent and entertaining way they have gone about their task.

This treasure trove of information details the daring deeds and derring-do of a galaxy of Headingley Stadium stars.

But this is no dry and dusty document. The book teems with passion and panache and is graced with an authoritative yet absorbing style.

Triumph and tragedy, and there has been much of both among the blue and amber brigade, is covered admirably by the authors, whose love of one of the sport's institutions is amply evident.

No rugby league devotee, could fail to be energised by the exploits of luminaries such as Eric 'the Toowoomba Ghost' Harris, Andrew Clues - apocryphally held to have invented 'sledging' in cricket - Garry Schofield, John Holmes, Ellery Hanley and the recent union defector, Iestyn Harris. An RL gem. TK

100 Greats Leeds Rugby League Club by Phil Caplan and Peter Smith is published by Tempus Publishing Limited, price £12.

Updated: 11:52 Saturday, December 15, 2001