A Huddersfield Giants legend is to be honoured as one of the club’s greatest ever players … and will be using the event to help grassroots rugby league in the town.
Jermaine McGillvary – who also played for England and Great Britain – will be inducted into Huddersfield Rugby League Players Association Hall of Fame at a gala dinner.
And, as he came through the junior ranks at Deighton, all profits from the event will be shared between amateur clubs in Huddersfield who will be there to support Jermaine to help develop the sport.
The 37-year-old admits he ended up in rugby by sheer chance and still can’t believe he went on to have such a highly successful career.
Jermaine grew up in Bradley and went to Bradley Junior School and then All Saints. Although he played rugby from the ages of eight to 12 for Deighton he then switched to football for the next six years or so, playing for Dalton Dynamoes and then semi-professional at Emley.
Jermaine reveals it’s his great friend and fellow Giants player Leroy Cudjoe who enticed him back into rugby league.
“I was working nights in the warehouse at the Huddersfield B&Q next to the stadium when I bumped into Leroy and he persuaded me to go down and train with the Academy players,” said Jermaine.
“I thought I’d give it a go even though I was too old for the Academy side by then but the under 21s then had a spate of injuries so I ended up on the bench for them.
“I’ll never forget we played Leeds Rhinos in the first game and I was brought on for the last 10 minutes when we were something like 110 points down already.
“After that experience I was ready to quit but my mum told me to stick with it so I did and, as they say, the rest is history.”
Jermaine cemented his place in the Giants first team in the 2011 season and was awarded the Albert Goldthorpe Rookie of the Year Medal after scoring 30 tries in 30 appearances.
Huddersfield Rugby League Players Association president Michael Lawrence said: “There is a strict criteria for players to be inducted into the hall of fame and Jermaine goes well beyond that.
“He’s been an outstanding player and, if you look at his record, he’s probably the most decorated Huddersfield player in the modern era and, at one point, was hailed as the world’s best winger.
“It was such a great privilege and pleasure to play alongside him for so many years. Jermaine could be a real joker in the dressing room, a great guy who was always mischievous with fantastic banter but totally focused as soon as he walked out onto that pitch and what a wonderful professional.
“I’ve never met a player who has had a bad word to say about Jermaine.”
Jermaine and long-term partner Hannah Wright have three sons, 14-year-old Isaac, 11-year-old Elijah and eight-year-old Ezra who all play football to a high level.
Jermaine is now totally focused on his family life since his retirement from rugby league last year.
“I just love being with the family and watching the boys play football,” he said. “Family means everything to me.”
And he’s thrilled that he’s being inducted into the Huddersfield Rugby League Players Association Hall of Fame.
“It’s hard to put into words how much it means to me – I was both stunned and surprised,” he said. “I expected to just retire from the game and everyone forget about me.
“Hopefully it will act as inspiration to my boys and others that a lad from Huddersfield can go on to achieve good things.”
The event will be at the Accu Stadium on Friday October 3, starting at 6pm where Jermaine will be interviewed about his career by specialist sports host Pete Emmett who hosts England’s rugby league international games and the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley. Anyone who attends will have a professionally taken photo with Jermaine.
The guest speaker will be Jamie Peacock, the former England and Great Britain captain who played for Bradford Bulls and Leeds Rhinos, winning nine grand finals, four Challenge Cups and four world titles. He is now a motivational speaker.
Jermaine played 312 games for the Giants between 2010 and 2023. He is sixth on the list of all-time Super League try-scorers with 196 – all for Huddersfield – and scored 12 tries in 17 appearances for England, gaining another four caps for Great Britain.
Jermaine’s career highlight came in the 2017 World Cup when he played for England in their narrow World Cup final defeat against host nation Australia and was named in the Team of the Tournament.
During the tournament he scored seven tries in five appearances, ran more metres than any other player in the competition and was nominated for the Golden Boot as the world’s greatest player.
Jermaine’s career started on loan from Huddersfield at Batley Bulldogs in 2008 and he retired last September after playing his final year at Wakefield Trinity where he scored two tries as they won the 1895 Cup at Wembley in the competition for rugby league teams outside Super League.
In all, Jermaine scored 250 tries in 366 career appearances.
Tickets for the event are £49 and to buy them go to https://www.tickettailor.com/events/huddersfieldplayersassociation/1635572
Photos by: John Rushworth at Photoeye.co.uk
Written by ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging, website content, copywriting and ghost-writing autobiographies.
Huddersfield Giants to stay at the Accu Stadium in 2026 after delay over move to The Shay
