Ikram Butt demolished the myth that Asians can't excel in rugby by becoming the first Muslim rugby international in either code when he played for England against Wales in Cardiff in February 1995.
He broke down barriers in a playing career which saw him represent several clubs, including Featherstone Rovers and Leeds RL, although he played just one first-team game for the latter, his hometown club.
Butt offers a unique perspective on his sp
orting experiences in his new autobiography
Tries and Prejudice, particularly in his formative years playing the sport he loves in Leeds in the late 1970s, when the amateur leagues were a bastion of the white working-class.
"I must admit that, as a young player trying to get on in the world, I did suspect that there might be something racial in the way I was being treated," writes Butt.
"I no longer think that now and am always reluctant to play the race card at the first excuse. But the fact remains that, as an Asian in what was seen to be an essentially white working-class game, participation in rugby league wasn't always made easy.
"Not that I am suggesting that rugby league is any more racist than other sports, because it isn't.
"In fact, as the journalist Dave Hadfield wrote in a September 1990 edition of Rugby League Week magazine, while interviewing Tony (brother) and me after I signed for Featherstone, 'Compared with other major team sports, rugby league has a long and proud record of being close to colour-blind.' On the face of it, that's true.
"You only have to see the impact on the game of, say, the Lebanese community in Sydney, or the influence of black West Yorkshire-born players such as Sonny Nickle, Henderson Gill and Roy Powell to recognise how important non-white faces have been in the game.
And that's without mentioning all-time legends like Clive Sullivan, Billy Boston, Cec Thompson and Ellery Hanley. To pretend that there was no problem at all, though, would be kidding ourselves.
"Certainly, the toughest environment in which to operate from that point of view was the amateur game. As you might expect, amateur rugby league was tough enough without any racial nonsense.
"Once at Apperley Bridge, for example, we played Hunslet Parkside in some cup competition or other, and me and Sonny ended up fighting and eye-balling each other. I'm glad it didn't get serious. He was a hardnut, Sonny. He still is.
"As far as racial abuse goes, most of the stick I took came in the form of insults. I remember watching our Tony play in an amateur cup final once and he got sent off for retaliation after someone called him a Paki.
"It was so completely out of character for him to do that, I knew straight away that someone must have really annoyed him. And the daft thing is, the bloke who was giving him stick turned out to be one of his mates.
"But that's how it often is. Most folk say things without realising how obnoxious they are being. They don't see that they are doing anything wrong in acting so superior.
"You do get your out-and-out racists, obviously, the brainless white supremacists who want to keep Britain for the British, whatever that is supposed to mean.
