EXCLUSIVE: Roland Butcher and Maggie Alphonsi helped bring equality to Britain’s sporting landscape, say awards chiefs, as the pair were recognised
Two sporting superstars who became inspirations to the nation by smashing down barriers to achieve their dreams have been honoured with lifetime achievement awards.
Roland Butcher, the first black cricketer to play for England, and Maggie Alphonsi MBE, who helped the Red Roses win the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup, have been recognised for helping to bring equality to Britain’s sporting landscape.
Nik Trivedi, acting chief executive officer of charity Sporting Equals, hails them as “true pioneers whose influence extends far beyond their achievements.”
He says: “They have inspired generations, challenged established norms and helped create a more inclusive future for sport. We are proud to recognise their extraordinary contributions.”
Ahead of receiving their gongs at a London ceremony, hosted by Olympic legend Colin Jackson, the winning pair opened up to the Daily Star on their incredible journeys.
Roland Butcher has spent his life batting away adversity with the same courage he displayed staring down cricket’s greatest bowlers.
When he made history by becoming England’s first ever black cricketer he had to face five of the most fearsome quickies ever to play the game.
His international Test Match debut was already written into the annals of sporting history.
The first game he was due to play on the 1981 West Indies tour was cancelled after the Guyana government banned team mate Robin Jackman when they discovered he had played in apartheid South Africa.
When Roland’s big moment finally arrived in Barbados it was marred by tragedy after England assistant manager Ken Barrington died from a heart attack during the match.
Butcher walked out to face the dreaded West Indies attack of Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Colin Croft and Malcolm Marshall devastated and heartbroken.
But he did not shy away and achieved his boyhood dream of becoming an international cricketer.
He has spent his life smashing sporting barriers out of the ground in the face of politics, racism, tragedy and heartbreak using each as a life lesson to make him stronger.
After reaching his goal he devoted himself to helping others achieve theirs as a coach, university sporting director and president of the Caribbean’s first girls’ cricket team – efforts that earned him Sporting Equals’ special lifetime achievement award.
“I’m deeply honoured and privileged,” he told the Daily Star.
“It’s not an award that they give to everyone. I will cherish for the rest of my life. I hope that me receiving this award is an inspiration for other young people to dream their dreams and graft.”
For ‘graft’ is what Roland had to do to reach the pinnacle of sport.
Born in Barbados his parents moved to Britain without him when he was two. After spending every moment of his young life playing cricket and dreaming of making it big he followed his family to England at 13.
“It was bloody cold,” he said. “What I have learned over the last 59 years is to be able to cope with that. It seemed a totally different place to what I had been accustomed to. In the Caribbean it’s bright sunshine every day 365 days of the year, you’ve got lovely beaches and a real outdoor life and a love for cricket.
“When I arrived in the UK it was obviously different, the sun’s not shining, everything looks grey and more importantly for me people played football in the streets and not cricket so all that was very strange.”
Supported by his two England-born brothers he knuckled down and learned both sports – later becoming a UEFA-qualified football coach with Reading FC.
“Football really became my love for a year-and-a-half. I did nothing with cricket at all,” he said. “You fit in that way.”
Ironically his new found love for football led to him rediscovering cricket and making it his career. After a ‘jumpers-for-goalposts’ weekend kickabout in his local park a cricket team turned up and asked Roland and his pals if anyone wanted to make up the numbers.
He initially said ‘no’ but a friend cajoled him into it and Stevenage 3rd XI were so impressed they invited him to join their club.
Roland was fast-tracked into the first team and when a friend landed a job at Gloucestershire County Cricket Club he tipped them off about the talented young batsmen.
They were so impressed they sent him on the MCC young cricketers’ apprenticeship programme – where he honed his skills alongside fellow rookie Ian Botham who was to become his England captain and lifelong pal.
Roland joined Middlesex and helped them win six County Championships between 1974 and 1990. When he was called up to become England’s first black player its significance at first passed him by.
“All it meant to me at the time was I was about to fulfill a dream that I had when I was a kid in Barbados,” he said. “I had very few ambitions but the main one was to be an international cricketer. Obviously the thinking would have been for the West Indies at the time because I didn’t know what was going to happen.
“When I got the chance to represent England at cricket my only focus really was: ‘This is what I have worked all these years for. I want to take it and grab it with both hands. I want to enjoy it and I want as much of it as possible’.
“The significance of being the first black player to play for England never ever crossed my mind. That was much later when other people made a big fuss.”
Roland said he ‘never had many incidents’ of racism after arriving in the UK and he simply ignored it because he was so focussed on achieving.
“I came to England when I was 13-and-a-half so I’d never ever experienced racism before that because in Barbados you didn’t come into contact with white people very easily if at all,” he said. “So there were never any situations of racism. When I moved here all that was happening meant nothing to me. I didn’t understand it. I think kids who were born here would have had it all their life.
“For me, probably through ignorance or whatever, I was able to really not take it on. My focus was really on one thing. I wasn’t to be sidetracked by anything else.”
But he was aware of politics’ influence on sport. The axing of his debut Test Match was not his first experience of Guyana’s strict anti-apartheid laws. A previous match he was due to play in on the island for Barbados had been scrapped after his fellow opening batsman was found to have visited South Africa.
“It was exactly what happened in the Robin Jackman affair,” he said. “With England in ‘81 when it happened again that was the second time it happened for me. I then understood the politics because South Africa was a hotbed of discussion and the Caribbean countries didn’t take too lightly to people who’d been to South Africa. So I got my first dose of serious politics there. It played out for me in agood way and a bad way. The good way is that I was due to play in that test match in Guyana which would have been my first Test Match.
“But as it worked out because the Test Match was cancelled I then made my debut on Barbados in the next test match – the place I was born – in front of my family, my wife, my friends, kids I grew up with. I wouldn’t take that away. It worked out perfectly.
“The bad bit Guyana was a batting paradise – all records were broken there. Barbados favoured the bowlers. Then Ken Barrington had a heart attack and passed away. That all happened on the second day of my first test. Everybody was devastated, you can imagine., But you still had to go and face those five bowlers after that. It was a very difficult time.”
His England career suffered in the wake of the tragic tour. He only played three Tests and three one day internationals despite a glittering first class career in which he scored over 12,000 runs with a top score of 197.
After hanging up his pads he devoted his life to schooling others in both cricket and football. Brendan Rodgers – with whom he had done his UEFA training – asked him to join him as a coach at Reading FC.
He taught both sports at Westminster School in London and St Edward’s, Oxford, was Bermuda national cricket coach, a West Indies team selector and a patron of the ACE charity set up to help make the game more inclusive.
“It doesn’t where you’re born, your sex, the colour of your skin, you should have the chance to reach for your dreams,” Roland said. “And if I can assist in any way I would do that. I believe all people deserve an opportunity – then it’s up to them. But creating the platform and the environment for them to get there – the opportunity – that’s what excites me. You have to dream it first before you can actually achieve it. Dream it and then work towards it.
“It’s not always going to be smooth but you’ve got to persevere. At the end of the day it’s a goal that should be driving you. There’s going to be obstacles along the way. But you’ve got to remain focussed and take every one of those steps as part of the learning curve for you to achieve what you want. Stay focussed. And then when you get there just celebrate getting there but then you have a responsibility to help others to get there.”
Now 72 he is himself having to re-focus following the recent death of his wife Cheryl, 69, as they were planning their retirement together. He is writing three books at the same time and trying to encourage six-year-old grandson Chase to take up cricket.
“It is so short our time,” he said. “I thought my wife and I had more time. We were together for 50 years. So we were just going to retire and we were then going to do things that retired people should do. The good Lord had other things in mind and that’s where we are right now.
“It has refocussed me now. I now do things in a hurry. I am now really having to live for my children and my grandchildren. So my thing for them is really not just follow those dreams but enjoy your life as much as possible. Don’t put things off. If you want to do something just go and do it. Don’t say, ‘I’m going to do it tomorrow’ because nobody has time put down.”
Maggie Alphonsi helped England win the Women’s Rugby World Cup with a limp – the legacy of being born with a club foot.
When she was a baby she underwent surgery to straighten out her right foot after it was ‘completely turned in’ at birth.
Maggie’s mum did not mention it to her as a youngster and as she grew up she embarked in a rugby union career completely unaware she’d had the condition or the op.
It was not until the talented Saracens flanker was picked for England aged 20 that the team doctor spotted her unusual gait and quizzed her on a surgery scar on the back of her leg. Her mum then told her of her ordeal as a tot.
The condition did not stop Maggie playing 74 times for England, scoring 28 tries and helping the Red Roses win the 2014 World Cup and a record-breaking seven consecutive Six Nations titles.
The modest superstar, who through her work with the Steps charity has helped inspire others with similar conditions to fulfil their dreams, said she was ‘over the moon’ to be honoured with a Sporting Equals’ lifetime achievement award.
She told the Daily Star: “I’m surprised, overwhelmed, excited, happy – all of those really positive words. But just generally I feel quite humbled by it. You don’t really acknowledge the stuff that you’ve done before and take stock of what you’ve achieved. When someone recognises you for it you think, ‘crikey, I must have done something good then. That’s a special thing.
“My journey has been around the whole ‘don’t stop moving, maximise the things around you, be curious, embrace your challenges, your failures’. Yes it’s about being driven and being motivated. I think a lot of people in the world have that. But really for me what has been the true essence of my journey is that I’ve always tried to keep learning. I’ve always tried to be curious about what’s in front of me and the people around me. Whatever that goal is you’ve got to commit to it and hope that you bring others along with you.”
After she born into a single parent family in Lewisham, south London, she spent much of her first year under the care of doctors trying to combat her condition called congenital talipes equinovarus.
She joins an elite group of stars to achieve sporting greatness despite it – including ex-Liverpool and England footballer Steven Gerrard, golfer Jon Rahm, NFL quarterback Troy Aikman and US women’s soccer legend Mia Hamm.
“I was born with my right foot completely turned in,” said Maggie. “It’s not uncommon. But when I was born with it a lot of parents didn’t know how to deal with that or how to support their child. I had the operation to trim away my calf and ligaments in that area to help straighten the foot.
“I think I had the operation within a year. The aim is that your bones are supple and soft so they can get away with doing the operation. When I was fairly young I had to go into hospitals every now and again just to make sure my foot had been aligned. It happened so young I had no recollection of what I went through.
“The England rugby doctor talked to me about it. He said, ‘your foot has not got a normal gait like anyone else and you’ve got a massive surgery scar on the back of your right leg, what was that? Then I talked to my mother and then I started to draw the dots with the England doctor. Some athletes who have had versions of it were in the Paralympics. One young man had his foot amputated as a result of it. So I’m very appreciative that I was able to have an operation and it didn’t affect my career.
“It effects your gait – the way you run, the way you walk. So even though I’d had the operation if you look at me when I walk it still looks like I’ve got a bit of a limp because my foot doesn’t have a normal gait. The challenge I had whilst playing rugby was I used to have hamstring tears all of the time because my back probably wasn’t aligned because I was probably leaning to one side every now and again.
“The reality was the right side of my body and my whole entire gait has been amended to suit my foot. It’s early adversity but you somehow manage to find a way and still be successful out of it.”
Maggie developed a love of sport at primary school after reaching her current 5ft 4in by the age of nine.
“I did my rounders, I did my football, I did my netball. I did all that different sport and I really enjoyed it,” she said. “I think what I loved so much about it was that cohesion with other people. I just loved being part of a team. I grew up in a single parent environment. I was always on my own so maybe sport gave me immediate siblings.”
The first time she heard of rugby was aged 13 when her PE teacher turned up to school nursing black eyes and a bruised face saying she had been playing.
Fascinated Maggie to enroll in her local club but was told: “We don’t have girls here.” Saracens was the only club then open to women.
“At that time women’s sport – rugby and football – was just non-existent,” she said. “I ended up having to go to Saracens which actually took me about an hour to get to but that was the only local club that had a women and girls section. I was like, ‘oh my God, this is a great sport’.
“What I fell in love with was the fact that creative freedom. You’d play netball and you can’t throw the ball past a certain place. You can’t have contact. With rugby you got the ball and just ran as fast as you can and if you see someone with the ball hit them as hard as you can. That was the rules that I was given. I flourished. My stature enabled me to have a lot of presence.”
She honed her skills while studying for a sports science degree at De Montford University and a masters in sports psychology. Then she fulfilled a dream she’d had since a teen to play for England. She was one of three players of colour in the squad.
“I never saw my colour. It felt very colourless. I felt like it wasn’t a thing,” she said. “I just got my head down and did what needed doing. I didn’t experience racism really. That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. It probably didn’t come into my conscious mind. It’s about building that resilience. When I work with young people I tell them, ‘throw yourself out there, expose yourself to various environments and whatever the outcome you’ll learn from that’.
“Your destination is obviously a bit further in front of you but you’ve got to keep working to get to that point. It’s not the end of the world if you go down and you’re beaten. It’s a challenge but you’ll get there in the end. It’s about focussing.”
Maggie had to re-focus herself after suffering the disappointment of England losing the 2010 World Cup final to New Zealand on home ground.
“It was probably my lowest point because I thought as a team and as a unit we had the ability to win it,” she said. “The thought went through my head, ‘Oh my God, maybe we’re not that good? And actually maybe I need to do something else with my career because maybe I’m not that good at rugby.’ It was a reassessment of one’s goals and my identity. What do I do now? Literally that was the hardest bit.
“For me it took a really good effort to go, ‘I’m going to come back and I’m going to commit to this team’. It was also difficult because at the time women’s sport really was not watched or shown on TV. You kind of felt, ‘we’re doing it but who’s actually watching it’. There was a level of, ‘why did you get into it, what do you want to achieve, what do you hope through winning you’re going to achieve in terms of hopefully changing a generation of attitudes towards women’s sport.”
“I did have to go through that questioning period but thankfully for me I came back. I didn’t want to end my career as a runner-up. This is not going to be the full stop in my legacy. So I decided I’m going to throw everything at it for a gold medal for my team. Then if I don’t get it I have to accept that I’d done everything that I possibly could. Some people retired but for me I had clarity about what I wanted to achieve and my big focus was playing for the team.”
Maggie said she decided to retire after the 2014 World Cup whatever happened – and believes that focussed her to help drive England to glory.
“It was my final shot. If you do something where you have got no safety mat underneath or you pull away from the harnesses you do commit because there was no second chance after that. I knew I had to do it,” she said.
“Afterwards I felt relief. Of course I was happy and excited and all the positive words. But it was actually just a relief because prior to that we had lost two World Cups before that so basically we hadn’t won any rugby in terms of the World Cup since 1994. There was real weight on our shoulders – we had to deliver. The governing body was investing in us so it felt like we had to win.
“I’m just very grateful. In a weird way I have a sense of peace and ease with my career because I was able to end it the way I wanted to. Some athletes unfortunately don’t get that. I’m very grateful I got to achieve what I set out to achieve.”
Following her retirement she launched a brief bit to represent Team GB at the 2016 Rio Olympic in the shot put but did not get same buzz she got from rugby.
“I threw everything at it but I think the reality was that everyone was bigger and stronger than me,” she said. “It also made me realise that I love team sports. I love being around people. The shot put is a very individual sport.”
She and wife of four years Marcella are now focussed on passing on that mantra to their children – two girls and a boy aged between four months to five years.
“I do want them to get into rugby. I want them to be active,” Maggie said. “Team sports will give them the ability to learn how to work with other people. Ideally rugby, but if not, as long as they are doing something. They will make friends and they will be friends for life. That’s my aim.”