THERE have certainly been greater try scorers than Des Drummond down the years, but it is difficult to find many wingers who could hit harder, and few were able match his all-round abilities.
Rugby League lost one of its genuine icons last week when news emerged that Drummond had died at the age of 63 at his Bolton home.
Born in the Jamaican coastal town of Savanna-la-Mar on 17 June 1958, Desmond Lloyd Drummond moved to England with his family during his childhood. His elder brother Alva signed for Leigh, and it wasn’t long before Des joined him at Hilton Park.
The details of that signing are quite remarkable. Alva had been selected to play for Leigh’s ‘A’ team in a match at Barrow. His younger brother joined the players on the bus, only intending to watch the game. Realising they were a man short, the coach Geoff Fletcher asked Des to play. The rest, as they say, is history.
Drummond scored a hat-trick which included one spectacular individual try. Fletcher persuaded the directors to sign him. They agreed, but with the club coffers in a parlous state, they could only offer him the contents of the chairman’s wallet. Reports differ as to whether this was £25 or £50. Either way, Drummond pocketed the cash, and Leigh had bagged themselves an all-time great for a pittance.
He made his first-team debut two days after Christmas in 1976 against Hull Kingston Rovers in a 23-9 defeat. He had to wait until his 11th match – a 26-7 loss at Bradford – for his first try – and it was another beauty.
Leigh were relegated, but they bounced back in style, topping Division Two in 1978 on the back of Drummond’s 19 tries. They avoided relegation in 1978-79 with Drummond top scoring with another 13 tries.
He would score 141 tries in 280 Leigh appearances, but those statistics only scratch the surface of the story.
Drummond was renowned for his unorthodox tackling style. Many an opponent would pick him out as the smallest player in the opposition and run at him, only to end up in a heap. Drummond’s technique was hardly textbook, often leading with his head and smashing his unsuspecting opponent somewhere near the sternum. A highlight reel of Drummond’s career would include as many brutal crash tackles as great tries.
Under Alex Murphy’s coaching, Leigh and Drummond enjoyed something of a golden period in the early 1980s. They beat Widnes 8-3 in the Lancashire Cup Final in September 1981. Later that season, Leigh were crowned champions of England when a midweek win at Whitehaven meant they had pipped Hull, Widnes and Hull Kingston Rovers in a thrilling four-horse race to the title. Drummond’s second-half try at the Recreation Ground kickstarted a comeback that night. It was one of 16 tries he scored that season.
Events elsewhere saw Drummond’s profile rocket. When Rugby League was at one of its lowest ebbs (only the two Hull clubs averaged attendances of over 6,000 in 1981-82), he did as much as anybody to revive its fortunes, becoming something of a television star in the process.
Having made his international debut in the 1979-80 European Championship, helping England to victories over Wales and France, Drummond was called up to face the 1980 Kiwis, playing in the second and third Tests. After a loss and a draw, Drummond rescued the series with a man-of-the-match performance in the third Test at Elland Road, scoring the only two tries of the match as Great Britain won 10-2. He played other internationals against Wales and France, including one in Venice against the French in 1982.
His battles with the great Eric Grothe later that year were box office. The Kangaroos demolished an ageing and unfit Great Britain, and while Grothe profited from far superior teammates to Drummond’s, the Great Britain winger impressed the Australian management, with his ability to defend as well as anybody could have expected against the man mountain Grothe. Drummond was one of the few British players to look like an international-standard footballer in 1982. Incredibly, he was the only Great Britain player to play in all three Tests.
Drummond became a household name in 1983 with his outstanding performances on the popular BBC programme Superstars. As a rugby player and a former British amateur judo champion, Superstars was perfect for Des. He ran a time of 10.85 seconds in the 100 metres that would have seen him qualify for the Olympic heats a year later. He was a natural in the events that required strength and agility like weightlifting and the assault course. The image of him leaping up a wall without using the scrambling rope remains an enduring image of his athleticism and agility.
Drummond qualified for the world final in Hong Kong, which gave Rugby League priceless exposure, but he was disadvantaged by a change in the rules which meant points weren’t awarded against bodyweight in various events. At 5’7” and 12 stone, Drummond was therefore at a disadvantage competing against much bigger men. Nevertheless, the fillip that his and Keith Fielding’s performances on Superstars gave to Rugby League cannot be underestimated.
His star continued to shine as he was selected for the Lions Tour of the Southern Hemisphere in 1984. Compared to 1979 and 1982, Great Britain were much improved in defence and attack, although they were still lost all six Tests against Australians and New Zealanders. But the winger-centre combination of Drummond and Garry Schofield, along with Andy Goodway, provided what was christened the try of the decade as their pace, side-stepping and passing opened up the Australia defence at Lang Park for a thrilling long-range try. Schofield scored it, but Drummond was the instigator. He had also set up a try for the teenage centre in the first Test.
Back home, things weren’t quite so rosy for Leigh. The defence of their title resulted in a disappointing mid-table finish in 1983. They slipped further down the table in 1984 and were relegated a year later. A broken ankle in November 1984 at Barrow ended his season, and, in truth, he never quite had the same electric pace again.
Drummond was instrumental in Leigh’s instant promotion again, as they won 33 of their 34 matches, with Drummond scoring 21 tries in all competitions, including a hat-trick in an impressive win at Widnes in the quarter-final of the John Player Special Trophy. But a fall-out with the club in March 1986 saw him transfer listed for £120,000 after he missed training. The dispute would go on for nearly a year.
After nine games and two tries for Western Suburbs in the Winfield Cup, where his teammates included Lee Crooks and Deryck Fox, Drummond moved to Warrington for £40,000 in February 1987. Earlier in his career, he had denied the Wires the league championship by scoring the only try in an 11-4 win in April 1981. Warrington fell short by two points with the title going to Bradford.
Drummond’s Warrington debut came on 8th February as he scored in a 31-10 home win over Bradford Northern. He helped them to the Premiership Final with tries against Hull KR and St Helens, but they lost 8-0 to Wigan in the first final at Old Trafford.
His final international appearance came in January 1988 as his try helped Great Britain win 28-14 against France in Avignon. He ended up with 24 Test caps and a further five for England.
His international career ended in controversy as a ban prevented him from touring with the 1988 Lions. In a Premiership match with Widnes in May, Drummond had been confronted with racist abuse from a spectator who had run onto the field. Drummond punched the bigot and was promptly banned from the tour.
The unfortunate irony was that Drummond had become a superstar at a time when racial tension and riots were dominating the news in the early 1980s. Drummond was on the receiving end of racist supporter chants and player sledges throughout his career. It remains an injustice that one of Rugby League’s great black icons had his international career ended after he was the victim of racist abuse.
The 1989-90 season yielded a Lancashire Cup Final win over Oldham at St Helens and a trip to Wembley. Warrington, however, were never really at the races against Wigan, despite an exceptional performance from skipper Mike Gregory. Drummond failed to land either of the big prizes at Warrington, but he did lift the Regal Trophy in 1991 as stand-in captain of the side. A dour 12-2 win over Bradford Northern at Headingley wasn’t memorable for much, but Drummond flattened Tony Marchant with a crunching tackle, and the Bradford winger didn’t return for the second half.
Drummond’s last season at Wilderspool was 1991-92 when they came fourth in the table and made little impression in the cups. Having scored 69 tries in 182 appearances, he dropped down two divisions to go on loan firstly to Bramley in 1992-93 (four matches, no tries) and then to Workington Town. It looked like he was finished on the big stage, but he moved to Derwent Park at just the right time.
Within months, Drummond was playing at Old Trafford as third-division Town pushed the Division Two champions Featherstone all the way in the Divisional Premiership Final. Town made up for that agonising 20-16 loss a year later by beating London Crusaders 30-22 at the Theatre of Dreams with Drummond scoring a first-half try. Town had gone into the match as champions of Division Two after Drummond had scored a hat-trick in the crucial match – a 54-2 home win over Keighley.
At the age of 37, Drummond was back in the first division, but sadly, just a few weeks into the season he had to deal with the tragic news that Alva had been killed in an accident on holiday.
The old magic was still there even at this stage of his career. He wowed the Popular Side at Derwent Park with his thunderous hits and kick returns that often got Town into their opponent’s half early in the tackle count. He could still go the length of the field, as he demonstrated one autumn day at Headingley, and he was still the master of the in-out finish in the corner, as he showed when he scored his final Town try in a nail-biting 18-16 win over Widnes. Drummond helped Town move from last place on New Year’s Day to a mid-table finish which secured the club’s spot in the first Super League season.
Drummond called it a day in April 1995, having scored 32 tries in 71 Town matches. It looked like Rugby League had seen the last of him, but after sitting out the 1995-96 Centenary Season, Drummond came out of retirement to play for Chorley in 1996, taking his place in a three-quarter line that also included his old Test foe Kurt Sorensen. Drummond scored three tries in 11 matches for the Lancastrians.
His next stops were Prescot Panthers and Barrow, for whom his respective records in 1997 were one try in four games and four in 11. His final match as a professional Rugby League player came on August 31st 1997, as Barrow lost at home to Lancashire Lynx in an expanded Divisional Premiership competition.
Drummond moved into amateur coaching with Bolton and also worked in conditioning with the Jamaican national side. He was occasionally seen at Rugby League functions but was ultimately a private man who shied away from the media for much of his career.
Including games for the Great Britain Under-24s, tour matches and Lancashire appearances, this wonderfully unique player scored 285 tries in 617 matches between 1976 and 1997.
Rugby League will never see his like again.
