Barry Hayles

From the superb Bristol Rovers Players Who's Who 1946-2018

BARRINGTON EDWARD HAYLES
b 17.4.1972 London
5’ 9”; 13 st F
Début: 9.8.97 v Plymouth Argyle
Career: CLP; 1989 Hayes; 1990 Willesden Hawkeye; February 1994 Stevenage Borough; 20.5.97 Bristol Rovers (£200,000) [62,32]; 17.11.98 Fulham (£2,100,000) [116+58,44]; 24.1.04 Sheffield United (free) [4,0]; 31.8.04 Millwall (£25,000) [49+6,16]; 20.7.06 Plymouth Argyle (£100,000) [58+4,15]; 1.1.08 Leicester City [10+18,2]; 12.8.08 Cheltenham Town (loan); 13.7.09 Cheltenham Town (free) [34+17,11]; 18.9.10 Truro City (loan); Truro City; 14.8.12 St Albans City [16,6]; 14.12.12 Truro City (free); 23.7.13 Arlesey Town (free); 19.6.14 Truro City (free); 26.6.15 Chesham United (free) (player-coach). 7.2017 Windsor FC (Player-Coach)

Few strikers can command the respect of their fellow professionals in the same way as Barry Hayles, the burly, goal-scoring phenomenon, whose sale remains Rovers’ largest transfer in monetary terms. Rovers had apparently made an attempt to sign Hayles in October 1996, but it was as a twenty-five-year-old that he finally broke into League football on the back of 97(+6) Conference games for Stevenage, as well as the shock FA Cup win at Orient in December 1996, his 58 goals leaving him as the club’s leading scorer for three consecutive seasons. Overall, he scored 73 goals in 154 appearances at Borough. He had also scored thirteen goals in 25 games at Willesden, who had converted him from full-back, and he represented Middlesex against Hertfordshire, as well as being named Conference Player of the Year in 1995-96. A relative latecomer to the game, who always played with a smile on his face, Hayles scored a pre-season 1997 hat-trick against Bideford and a début goal; Rovers were not to rue the decision to sign him up, his 23 League goals in 1997-98 making him a popular leading scorer at the club. Endowed with remarkable upper-body strength, he scored Rovers’ equaliser on the stroke of half-time at Oldham in September 1997, the sixth goal in a 4-4 draw, and added braces against Brentford, Luton, Bournemouth, Oldham and Wigan before the season was out. This feat was repeated the following campaign against Wigan again, Lincoln and Walsall, whilst larger clubs came ever closer to signing the powerful front-man. Bizarrely, his 25th goal of the season in 1997-98, when he was voted the club’s Player of the Year, not only earned Rovers a play-off place, but also cost the club £50,000, as that was the clause built into his transfer from Stevenage if he totalled that number of goals in his first campaign. Representative honours continued to come his way, as he scored for the FA XI against the Highland League in 1997 and scored in both his England semi-professional matches, against the Republic of Ireland and Holland. Having transferred to Fulham, he scored against Rovers in the League in March 1999, when he was voted Man of the Match, and scored again on the two subsequent occasions he opposed his former club, once after 55 minutes for Millwall in the League Cup in August 2005 and twice for Cheltenham in September 2008. Despite a penalty miss against Notts County in February 1999, Hayles helped Fulham to two promotions as well as the 2002 UEFA Intertoto Cup, and won the first of his ten full caps for Jamaica, against Cuba in June 2001, whilst at Craven Cottage, before reuniting with Ian Holloway at Plymouth. Known as "The Ox in the Box" (Ian Holloway), he scored on his début against Wolves before enduring relegation and then enjoying promotion at Leicester. A regular rather than a free-scoring striker, Hayles’ sole League hat-trick came in Millwall’s 3-0 win at Derby over Christmas 2004, whilst he was sent off twice each for Cheltenham and Fulham and once in the colours of Plymouth and Millwall. A Truro début against Bideford was the first of 62(+5) matches in which he scored 29 times as City won the 2010-11 Southern League Premier Division title, incredibly scoring their seventh goal before half-time in the victory over Farnborough in October 2011 and, past his fortieth birthday, he was sent off at Welling in January 2013. He then scored seven goals in 24 Southern League encounters with Arlesey Town. Barry Hayles was called up by the Cayman Islands for the unofficial game against DC United in 2000 before pledging his international allegiance to Jamaica. Having scored 34 goals in 89 matches in his first spell at Truro, he returned to the Cornish side in the summer of 2014 and added a further four goals in 17(+14) Southern League Premier Division fixtures, City defeating St Neots Town 1-0 in the play-off final to secure promotion. Incredibly, he returned to The Mem in November 2015, at the age of 43 years 205 days, to become Rovers’ oldest-ever FA Cup opponent and, even more remarkably, to enable seventh-tier Chesham United to defeat Rovers, 75 places above them, Hayles setting up the winning goal for Ryan Blake. He was to score seven goals in 18(+20) matches for Chesham during the 2015-16 campaign. In June 2016 he was a member of the England Seniors side which won the World Cup for their age group in a tournament in Chiang Mai, Thailand, playing alongside Steve Phillips. Barry Hayles lives in Beckenham, Kent with his wife Maxine Simister and three young children, Paige, Tate and Delaney.