Rugby man who tries... and succeeds

TERRY FLANAGAN

In the first of a new series, Martyn Torr chats with Terry Flanagan, a man so successful in business he could retire at 46. Now he uses his business skills as Mahdlo’s super fundraiser...

FLAN could sell sand to the Arabs . . . it’s an oft-repeated phrase about Terry Flanagan.
Not surprising, really, because we are talking about a Derker lad made good.

In a rags-to riches tale that would not be out of place in a Hollywood film script, Terry went from a humble birth in a Derker pub to become a star sportsman with a head for business.

At the same time as he was developing a glittering career in rugby, he also had a construction job, went on to work on oil rigs and, hungry for a new challenge, co-founded what has now become one of the largest mobile communications consultancies on the planet, with a multi-million pound turnover.

So successful was he that he was able to retire at 46. Now 50, he is content in retirement but far too busy for his own good.

Terry now has a high-profile role as lead fund-raiser in the new Oldham Youth Zone project, Mahdlo, and the £5.5 million centre under construction in Egerton Street.

Terry and his wife Sue, also from Derker, have long since left behind the environs of their youth and now live in a beautiful house in Grasscroft but they have never forgotten their roots . . . hence his hectic involvement in Mahdlo.

He enthusiastically accepted an invitation to take up the demanding and time-consuming role of private-sector liaison and deputy chair which, to the likes of you and I, translates to fund-raiser.

Sipping coffee from an enormous cup — not a mug, please note — at the glass-topped, island breakfast bar in his beautiful home, he gently laughs at my interpretation but doesn’t deny the truth of it.

“Mahdlo is probably accounting for around 20 per cent of my time at the moment,” he admits, but the statement is made without a hint of regret for I rapidly discovered that I was in the company of man who commits.

I guess this goes back to his youth, when, at the age of 10, he was a rugby league legend in the making. For this Oldhamer, who was born in the Wheatsheaf Inn on Derker Street and was educated at St Anselm’s, Werneth, has played rugby at the highest level.

A loose forward all his career (well, he just had to be in charge didn’t he?) he graduated through Saddleworth Rangers’ youth squads and signed professional forms for Oldham in the summer of 1979 — the Watersheddings club hierarchy of Ray Hatton and Brian Gartland beating off a host of clubs to land the young tyro’s signature.

He went on to make more than 300 appearances for the Roughyeds and also captained Great Britain under-24s before touring Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea for 13 weeks in 1984, winning four senior Great Britain caps.

He is also featured in the Rugby League Hall of Fame, an honour of which he is immensely proud, in that understated way of his.

“I hadn’t been married long and here I was off jetting off to the other side of the world for three months. Sue was always incredibly supportive of my career in rugby and I went with her blessing,” he said. We didn’t dwell too long on his rugby — it’s all there in the wonderfully evocative book Watersheddings Memories.

He quit the sport at 30 with a long-standing neck injury but long before this day dawned he had prepared his future in business. He studied part-time at UMIST for a degree in electronics and his business career with construction company Costain, which supported him through his rugby days, were to reap the benefits.

Terry worked on the oil rigs as a trade-off for the rugby tour, out there for two weeks stints at a time.

He later project-managed the telecomms element of the Channel Tunnel project for four years, making frequent trips into the gaping bore hole under the sea long before the first trains ran.

“The English end was highly regulated, bristling with Health and Safety regulations, but then you went over to the French side and guys were lolling about, walking in and out with Gauloises,” he remembers.

Tiring of corporate life he sought a new challenge and got himself into the fledgling mobile communications industry as a project manager. It was a life-changing decision.

Those early years with the Orange network set him up to start Mason Communications, a specialist consultancy to the industry, with founding partners Alex Smith and Dave Mason. Within a few years, they were running a company of 300 employees — “with many lads from Oldham,” he stressed — and a turnover in excess of £12 million.

The consultancy was based in the World Trade Centre at Exchange Quay, Old Trafford, and had offices in Dublin, Edinburgh and London.

What he describes as “creative tensions” led to Datatek, a South African conglomerate, being invited — after a worldwide search by bank group Rothschilds — to buy into the business.

Terry stayed on and the business grew again until, in 2004 with turnover now approaching £18 million, Terry once again invested his own money in the business when Analysis, a Cambridge-based company, joined forces with Mason.

Today the organisation is one of the largest global telecommunications consultancies in the world.

In 2007, he got out of the industry and, after six months walking around the world with Sue in Cambodia, Thailand and Bhutan, to name but three faraway exotic places — probably as far removed from Derker as one could imagine — he returned to business as chief executive of crane-hire specialists Commheist in Leigh, but stayed only two years before leaving to pursue other interests.

These days he spends his time investing in small start-ups, Commando Joe’s fun and fitness for kids, in Chadderton, is his latest venture, raising money for Mahdlo and, of course, his first love, rugby.

He is chairman of Saddleworth Rangers, where he started his stellar rugby career all these years ago, and is a father figure to the amateur club’s 18 teams. They have representatives sides from under-sevens to over 65s (I kid you not) and have just received planning permission for a new clubhouse at Shaw Hall Bank Road.

“Now all we need is £1 million to build it,” Flan says cheerfully.

Hold fast, and remember . . . this is the guy who can sell sand to the Arabs so watch out for building work to start soon.