Life’s a whole new ball game for Damian

FATHER and son: Damian with his dad Brian outside the boxing gym in Collyhurst

MARTYN MEETS... the endearing, charming and fascinating Damian Hughes
FOR a lad who should have been expelled from The Hulme Grammar School, Damian Hughes has done OK.

In truth, he’s done considerably better than that. He’s now a full-blown professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, has written seven books, has his own human-resources consultancy and works with Sale Sharks rugby union and Warrington Wolves rugby league clubs.

He’s also coached at Manchester United, played football in Greece — plus, of course, Seel Park, Mossley — and has rubbed shoulders with Richard Branson, he of Virgin Group fame.

This is one extraordinarily gifted man. And he’s one of us, from Oldham, albeit via Collyhurst.

The previous paragraphs are a mere précis of a stellar career which almost went pear-shaped when Damian was marched into his teacher’s office at Hulme and told to expect the worst. Expulsion.

“I was scared to death,” he said. “I knew my mum and dad would kill me.”

But two teachers, Bernard Counsell and Colin Wilson, spoke up for the young tearaway and the cheeky, mischievous Damian, now living in Chadderton, was reprieved.

It was a life-changing moment.

“I lay in bed at home that night and resolved to turn my life around. I was only 14, but I knew I couldn’t let down mum and dad.”

Dad was - is - legendary boxing coach Brian Hughes, who has an MBE for his services to boxing and the community and has produced boxers who have won British, European, Commonwealth and world championships.

Little wonder then that the young Damian, who used to spend all his spare time at his father’s gym, wasn’t going to take any gyp at school.

Damian was still in awe of his father and was seriously concerned about the repercussions of being kicked out of Hulme Grammar.

He put his energies into his love of football, playing for the school, Oldham and Greater Manchester schoolboys and representing England independent schools. He was good enough to play semi-pro at Mossley and Buxton, too, a bustling no-nonsense centre forward.

He readily acknowledges that junior-school academia came easily and concedes, too, that he expected to sail through life at grammar school. He did, eventually, securing 11 GSCE ‘O’ levels and four A-levels before securing a place at the University of Leeds.

He chose to read the classics, Greek and Latin, and was sent to Greece for his third year of study, arriving in the northern industrial town of Thessalonika.

“It was cold, inhospitable and the university was closed, the lecturers were on a three-month strike,” he recalled.

Ever resourceful, Damian turned to his footballing skills and rolled up at one of the city’s three clubs, Aris Salonika, asking if he could train with the squad .

“I thought this would be a way of meeting some like-minded people and getting something to do until the university opened again,” he said.

The manager demanded references so Damian called upon his old manager at Mossley and Buxton, Bob Murphy, and was accepted.

The team was not doing too well and the coach was under pressure in the local media.

One day, while in a taxi to collect future-wife Geraldine at the airport, Damian got chatting to the driver who produced a local newspaper reporting that the Aris coach was intending to sign a striker from England when the transfer window opened to turn around the team’s fortunes.

“That was me... I couldn’t believe it! The coach was pinning his hopes on me!” said Damian who, as it turned out, didn’t become the team’s saviour after all: the university lecturers ended their strike and he was plunged back into his studies, playing catch up.

Back in Leeds, Damian contracted meningitis, leaving him weak for football, so he turned his thoughts to coaching and reached what would be today the equivalent of UEFA B level. The ambitious, restless Chaddy lad began working with the Bobby Charlton Soccer Schools at Hopwood Hall, Middleton.

When the business was bought out by Manchester United, and Damian began coaching academy players at the Premiership giants, his fertile mind turned to thoughts of why young players of the same ability often went vastly differing ways.

“Their sporting ability was on a par but some went on and others fell by the wayside. I was fascinated by this mental side of sport.”

So he enrolled on a post-graduate course in psychology, a three-year, evening study commitment which was to shape his life forever. For this is a guy who doesn’t do things by half.

“I loved it, every minute. I wanted to get into the mental side of what made one person kick on and what made another fall away,” he added.

By now, Damian was working full-time with the academy at Manchester United — “I was totally immersed in a winning environment” — working closely with Reds’ legend Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, who was looking after the United juniors.

Damian was looking to spread his wings, to explore his potential. “I wanted to see for myself what life had to offer,” he said.

What he found was a penchant for making things happen, initially in industry — a life in which he travelled the world for Unilever, of the planet’s corporate giants — and latterly in the world of literature.

He has written seven books including “Hit Man”, “The Thomas Hearns Story”, which he co-authored with his father, chronicling the story of the “most exciting boxer of modern times” — his rise to super stardom from the urban wastelands of a single-parent family in Detroit.

It is an absorbing read, interweaving Brian’s reservoir of boxing know-how and Damian’s psychological insights.

He has founded the Liquid Thinker Management Consultancy working in education, sport and business to improve performance.

He has met, among others, Richard Branson, Muhammed Ali, Sir Alex Ferguson, legendary boxing trainer Angelo Dundee . . . and there is a fascinating anecdote of how he met and became friends with Australia’s awe-inspiring swimming coach Bill Sweetenham.

He even found time to get married to his long-time sweetheart Geraldine, who made me an outstanding beaker of coffee at their delightful home in Sale; and become a father to George who, judging by the portraits, will soon be worthy of the sobriquet Gorgeous George.

There is more, much, much more to this endearing, charming, fascinating man . . . and it’s all in part two, next Tuesday.