Richard Harris became a star in movies as a result of his performance as Frank Machin, although the film itself was not a box-office hit despite generally favorable reviews.
Delays in filming meant that Richard Harris had to cede his part in La grande évasion (1963) to Sir Richard Attenborough.
When Richard Harris was roughed up behind the scrum, rugby league legend Derek Turner, who was playing the character who punches him, was asked by director Lindsay Anderson to make the contact look real. So he did. He punched Harris for real and knocked him out completely. Shooting for the day had to be stopped while Harris recovered.
In a scene in a nightclub, a young woman sings the Helen Shapiro hit "Walking Back to Happiness". She was 21-year-old mill-girl Kim Leslie from Pudsey. Producer Karel Reisz needed a Yorkshire woman for a small singing part in the film, and advertised in the local papers. Within a few hours of the adverts appearing, 200 women had applied, from which a shortlist of four was selected. When these four women performed at the Wakefield Trinity rugby ground, the loudness of the crowd's applause was measured and Kim Leslie's performance was chosen.