Billy Barr: The Halifax lad who went on to captain his hometown club
BILLY BARR was a Halifax lad who lived the dream of playing for his hometown club.
The defender’s seven years of service at The Shay produced few highs, while Town were relegated from the Football League for the first time in their history in his penultimate campaign.
But his intense pride at graduating from the terraces to the team endures to this day, echoing right back to first joining Halifax in 1983.
”I played in a cup final at The Shay for St Mary’s under 14’s and I scored a hat-trick, and I scored schoolboy forms the week after,” he said. “Gerry Brook (youth team manager) came to my house.
”There was interest from Leeds but my parents didn’t drive and it was too far, and I’d grown up a Halifax fan anyway so it was a privilege to sign for the home-town club.
”It was totally different to how it is nowadays. We only had a basic squad of players, we didn’t have big squads.
”The games weren’t as regular as they are now, I remember it being quite ad-hoc, but you’d still play for your boys club. You were getting the best of both worlds really.
The youth team ended up winning the Northern Intermediate League in our second year, 1986-87, which was unheard of.
”Some of us were full-time and some were part-time, some, including my brother, was in the year below.
”We beat Leeds 4-0 at The Shay to clinch the title. Both Sheffield clubs were in it, so were Newcastle and Sunderland, Leeds, Huddersfield, Bradford.
”But it was little old Halifax that ended up winning it. Still to this day I hold it as one of my most memorable achievements in football.”
Still basking in the glow of silverware, Barr was handed an unexpected debut in an unexpected role at the start of the 1987-88 season.
”Wayne Allison, Lee Richardson and myself were offered professional contracts and we all broke in at the same time really,” he says.
”I was a centre-forward at this stage. Phil Brown got injured the day before the season started. Billy Ayre, the manager, pulled me into his office at two o’clock on matchday, first game of the season, and said ‘do you fancy playing rightback’ and I was like ‘yeah’.
”I don’t know whether he expected me to say yes or ‘I’d rather not’ but you don’t turn an opportunity down, even if it is out of position.
”Phil Brown was fit after that so I went on the bench and I ended up playing the first four years of my career as a left-back. A big change to what I was used to but great memories of the people I played with.
”I think I ended up playing about 40 games that year. I can’t remember what point I got in and stayed in.
”It took a bit of adjustment, with a different position and a different mindset. I wasn’t really a great defender, I wasn’t quick but I was athletic and I could run all day so I could maraud up and down that left side.
”I’d probably get found out more nowadays but I must’ve done something right because I ended up playing nearly 300 games at Halifax.”
The vast majority of those appearances were for a side fighting at the wrong end of the table.
”Perennial strugglers,” says Barr. “They were even as a supporter of the club before that.
”A small football club really within a working class area.
“When you go back you still see the same faces and it’s something they’ve stuck with their whole lives.
”There’s not been many highs along the way. Halifax fans are proper football fans.”
Relegation was a constant threat, with Town finishing 18th, 21st, 23rd, 22nd and 20th during Barr’s previous seasons as a first-teamer before the club finally succumbed in 1993.
”I think that was always going to be the case because the budget wouldn’t have been the greatest, crowds weren’t the biggest,” says Barr.
”Staying in the league was the biggest thing and I think the board would have been happy with that.
”I think we started one season really well, scoring lots of goals, up in the top half of the league but I think we ended up selling someone.
”You hoped at the start of every season, you worked as hard as you could to change things, but the quality of player we had wasn’t as good as the other clubs that had more money and could attract better players.
”The first proper matching training kit we had was under Billy Ayre and we all had Adidas with numbers on, and it was like ‘wow!’
”Little things like that meant a lot because it had been odd rugby tops and all sorts of things just to keep warm while you trained on Savile Park or Old Earth.”
Barr was made captain by caretaker-manager Mick Rathbone during Town’s doomed 1992-93 campaign, and was named supporters’ player of the year.
“We were definitely in a dog fight and there was a sense of, when Baz got appointed, ‘we can get out of this’,” he says.
”We’d done it as a football club for many years but it just wasn’t to be.
”It was just heartbreaking, being a Halifax lad and knowing a lot of people.
”I remember watching the local news on the Sunday (after Town lost to Hereford on the last day of the season) when I was at my parents’ house having my Sunday dinner, in tears at what had happened, seeing people you know on the pitch.
”The luck of staying in the league the seasons before had run out and it was time for the club to choose a different direction.”
Barr stayed for the following season to try and help Town nounce back at the first time of asking, but left for Crewe in 1994.
”It means everything,” says Barr when asked to sum up his time at Halifax. “It was the starting point as a 14-year-old, being connected to your home town.
”At times, under 15s would train with the first-team, on the pitch. I think that was in the Micky Bullock days.
”It was my grounding as a person. We weren’t flash Harry’s, it gave us the work ethic we still have now. It made you realise what you have to do to stay in an industry. You’ve got to work tirelessly every single day, every game.
”I have no regrets from my time at Halifax. Obviously higher league positions would have been better. It meant everything to me. To become captain of the club - proud, proud moments.”