Big man, brave heart

STORY to tell: Big Man Barrie McDermott

MARTYN MEETS...nice-guy sportsman Barrie McDermott
WE met in the Tesco cafe at Hill Stores, the Big Man and I... he drank white, unsweetened coffee while I indulged in a cappuccino. Bacon butties were on the go too.

I always knew Barrie McDermott was normal despite the madness of his life - a madness that pursues him to this day.

As we devoured our sandwiches and drank our surprisingly good coffees, I was engulfed in a torrent of enthusiasm that roared from this larger-than-life personality and almost left me exhausted.

Quite what it was like to be on the receiving end of a tackle when this lad from Lees was in his rugby league pomp I wouldn’t contemplate.

Here is a man who has turned around his life, become a role model for a generation of rugby players and who entertains millions with his appearances on Sky TV as a pundit for the sport he loves.

“I can sometimes do a 90-hour week, and that’s not an exaggeration,” he said.

“But I still find time to be a husband, father, son, brother and friend.”

He spoke with an eloquence that caught me a little unawares. Last year I had the pleasure of being master of ceremonies at a dinner where the big man was guest speaker.

I was unprepared for the sheer frankness of his talk that evening. He didn’t avoid any of the issues of his life: his misundertandings with the constabulary, his arrests, the accident when he was 15 that left him without sight in his right eye.

Such a handicap would have floored lesser men: the Big Man simply carried on.

And it had one advantage — when he became the first man in Britain on whom CS spray was used by the police, at least the stinging was in only one eye...

I have the distinct impression that nothing in his life, physically or metaphorically, could floor Barrie McDermott.

One of my earliest memories of him was at the ’Sheddings, the much-missed rugby league ground where he made his name playing for Oldham.

Because my mum and dad had a chippy in Waterhead I used to watch some games and I distinctly recall him taking to the field as a substuitute and hearing his dad call out: “Barrie... our Barrie! Stay on the field!”

I was perplexed until his thunderous tackle and front-up to the biggest man in the oppostion pack caused a fisticuffs furore that had Roughyeds’ fans roaring their approval. Barrie didn’t ever take a backward step when it came to a confrontation.

Had he been a more pliant type, he might have enjoyed more from his sport — certainly we would have seen more trips abroad aside from his five weeks in New Zealand with Great Britain’s under-19s.

“The BARLA people on that trip told me they would have picked me before, but they didn’t know my real name. They didn’t know who I was. I played under so many different names because I was always getting sent off and was supposed to be suspended.”

There was no humour, no smirking pride in that astonishing admission, just an acceptance of the fact that was how he was in those days.

“I wasn’t the best, not by a long way — but I was game, I’d have a go. I will always remember my dad’s advice to have a go at the biggest player on the other side, not the smallest.

“He didn’t want people thinking his son was a bully, he wanted them thinking ‘don’t take him on’ and he was right.”

Rugby league has shaped the man he is today. Long after a glittering playing career this former beast of a forward now has a staff of 25 at Leeds Rhinos, the Super League club where he is head of youth development, reporting directly to chief executive Gary Etherington, one of several men who have a huge influence on his career and his development.

Barrie made several, often unconscious references to his family, his father Bob, mother Jackie and sister Alison during our conversation and the values they have instilled in his considerable pysche.

Another was Dennis Maders, a mentor from Saddleworth Rangers where he was introduced to rugby league by Matt Maders.

He loved this most rugged of contact sports but one incident above a myriad of others changed his life for ever.

“I was just out shooting air rifles with my mate and it was a complete accident, but I lost the sight of my eye. I was hoping to join the Paras, I was in the Army Cadets and wanted to see what the world had to offer outside of Oldham, but the accident changed everything.”

There was a calm acceptance of what was obvisouly a life-changing event. He related the incident in a matter-of-fact manner.

Not that he has suffered as a result of not having a trade. His injury had put a temporary stop to his rugby. His mother wrote to his schoolmaster Fred Lawton giving permission for her son to play and the rest, as they say, is history.

He admits to being “rudderless” for a time but threw himself into rugby.

“I had a job with a local building firm but they let me go, the boss said work was something I did in between rugby and, looking back, he was right.”

He was now on the books at Oldham and after only one season at the ’Sheddings he was sold to Wigan, one of the biggest names in the game, for £100,000. It’s a huge amount of money now, let alone in 1994.

Mick Slicker, his coach at Waterhead and Peter Tunks, who coached him at Oldham, fashioned a forward who didn’t know the meaning of the word “fear” and he has taken into his new life the values he picked up from people like Terry Flanagan, Dennis Fleary and Paul Anderson, epic names in the game and people the Big Man respects hugely.

So here he was, an Oldham lad, a tearaway, playing in the Ashes series for Great Britain against Australia and drinking in Stringfellows in London.

A far cry from being “out on the hill” with his mates after games, and getting into bother. Yep, he was always getting into bother and he was sold by Wigan after just one season to Leeds — for another £100,000. By now he had met Jenny, his future wife, and the penny was beginning to drop.

He went on to enjoy a glittering career, is devoted to his family — Billy (16), Sophie (12) and Jessica (10) — all budding sports stars.

His playing career at Leeds came to end with a Grand Final defeat at Old Trafford and he had one last season — at Widnes after Oldham appeared lukewarm to his overtures of one last hurrah in his home town — and his last ever game was again at Old Trafford, in a Grand Final promotion play-off. Which, again, he lost.

He now spends his time promoting rugby and working with all aspects of the Rhinos below first-team level.

He speaks eloquently about the game, his aspirations, ambitions, family, his mentors and people like Ians Ogden and Sherratt and the late Ken ‘Tug’ Wilson who continue to influence his thinking to this day.

This gentle giant, this effusive, explosive, volcano of a man simply bursts with an effervescent energy that should be bottled and marketed. It would surely be a world best seller. He dreams of giving something back to rugby in Oldham — of seeing his home town back in the limelight — but that’s for the future.

We shook hands and went our different ways.

“I never craved the limelight but I always found myself in it,” he told me, almost as an aside.

Me thinks the spotlight is a long way from fading on this restless bear of unbridled sizzling, fizzing life force.


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