E63: Martin Offiah

Martin Offiah MBE is a rare thing, a rugby league player who is also a household name. As a player in the 1980s and 90s, he had an extraordinary impact on the game, scoring over 500 tries during his rugby league career, making him the highest try-scoring English player of all time, and now features in a statue of great rugby league players outside Wembley Stadium. Born in Hackney, London, Offiah was talent spotted at the Middlesex Sevens and started a career in rugby league, the only professional route available at that time. He was transferred from Widnes to Wigan in 1992 for £440,000, which was the biggest fee for a league player for fifteen years.

We talk about his early days as a player, dealing with racism and how he has navigated that sometimes strange post-sports career world of reality television, Offiah starred in the first ever Strictly Come Dancing and now mixes sports punditry with his passion for the environment, working with Connected Kerb, the electric vehicle infrastructure company.

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