EXCLUSIVE: 'My life was turned upside down' - Newry boss Barry Gray speaks about cancer diagnosis

Just over five months ago, Barry Gray was set for arguably the biggest task of his footballing life - keeping Newry City AFC in the Sports Direct Premiership.

The club were languishing at the bottom of the table when Gray was formally announced as the new boss at The Showgrounds on January 2nd.

Less than a few weeks later, everything changed.

The then 43-year-old felt a lump on his neck, and following tests it was discovered he had a form of throat cancer. He carried on regardless, battling through both radiotherapy and chemotherapy to take his place on the sidelines.

Until it all became too much - and on April 2nd, the club released a statement letting everyone know that the former Warrenpoint Town and Cliftonville boss would have to take time away from the pitch to focus on his recovery.

Now finished his treatment and ready to take his place back in the dugout, Gray reveals the tough times he's gone through and how he's confident he's out the other side, with confirmation he's in remission still to come.

"The last few months it's been just chaotic. Your life is turned upside down," he admits.

"I started back in January with a lump on the side of my neck. I thought it was a swollen gland and saw the doctors and got a few scans. Things got relatively quick in the space of a couple of weeks. After further tests, it turned out there was a tumour on my tonsil and some cancer cells and nodes in the side of my neck. Your world flips at that point and it's not the news that anyone wants to get. It took a while to digest. I'm not sure if I fully have digested it.

"People get worse news than I did. That's not to say that my news wasn't bad but I don't know if you fully realise it until you put yourself in that environment and are down at the Cancer Centre in Belfast where you see it first-hand every day yourself. It was hard to take, but it's one of those things that we have to deal with," he added.

"I would still be of the opinion that I’m probably still processing, probably still dealing with that mentally. Two young kids and a wife certainly didn't need to hear that type of news. It's scary for everyone involved, but I have lots of responsibilities in life. So we had to deal very quickly with the fact that I had cancer, that you were going to start treatment and the impact of that treatment."

Known for his passion on the touchline over the last decade and more as an Irish League manager, Gray is also a successful businessman outside of the game.

He admits his lifestyle is fast-paced, but that he also looks after himself.

"I don't drink much, I eat well, I'm very health conscious in terms of fitness, I'm involved in football, my lifestyle is fast and quick, but it's a healthy lifestyle.

"On the face of it, when you have that health, you shouldn't have any complications. And then the blink of an eye, you have the worst possible thing that you could think of. But it shows us that we can't live our lives expecting something bad to happen tomorrow. That's a terrible way to live," Gray feels.

"But it doesn't stop you getting cancer. It doesn't matter how fit or healthy you are, or how you perceive yourself. It's there, it's one in two, it's a massive risk for us all. Unfortunately for me, I was one of those.

"I dropped a lot of weight very, very quickly and that forced us down the line of hospitalisation and a feeding tube. Your nutrition is the key thing to keeping your strength up for being able to cope with the treatment.

"That's where I find myself now. For anyone that knows me, going into hospital is a major thing but, at that point of the journey, I knew and everybody knew around me that was close to me knew that it was the only answer, it was the only thing that was going to get me the end of the treatment plan," he says.

"While everyone else talks about the treatment, which is rough, telling me that I have to sit in a bed for 24 hours a day in a hospital is difficult, given the character that I am, but I needed it at that time, no doubt, and I don't think I would have got through that otherwise."

On the road to recovery

"We're probably eight weeks post treatment, so it's just pure recovery now. It's about getting your eating, getting your weight back up, getting your strength. I still have pain, I still have throat issues. That can take another six months, 12 months, some of those things might never return, nobody can say until we go through it.

"There's still too much inflammation in around the area that they treated up until three months before they can clearly show from scans whether it's been successful or not."

Now 44, Gray, married to Caoimhe and with two young children, says going through his ordeal allowed him to reflect on life.

"Before I had cancer, I was very content with what I had in my life. I was very happy with what I'd done. Yes, it was fast. Yes, I'd done a lot of things that other people say, why would you do that? I've worked hard to have a luxury to say that I'm happy, in work, in football, and at home most importantly. That works for us as a family.

"You hear people complain about jobs and complain about football and I do too at certain times. Situations like this make you reflect. So, if you reflect back and you realise that there are things in your life that you're not happy about, then this, no doubt, would open your eyes to try and motivate you to change some things.

"I look back over the last five months and it just reinforces why I work so hard and what I’ve done in life prior to cancer to provide for your kids so that their family life can be what it is, so your business life can be what it is, so you can have the flexibility in your own life, so you can manage a football team, because that's something that you want to do.

"Will I make wholesale changes to what I do day to day? It's very easy to compare life with cancer and with treatment and without it," he adds, looking towards he day he gets the new he now awaits.

"When I get that scan and that scan's clear, the last six months of this, I never want to speak about it. I don't want to be that person that refers back because this has happened to me or that it's going to make me into a different person. I'm very firm and I have been firm about the type of person I am and the type of people that I like to have around me.

"That's clarity of mind. Cancer hasn't changed that for me. It's just made me realise and reinforce more and more what I had that made me so happy prior to this period.

'Don't be afraid to ask for support'

Quick to point out that there are those touched by Cancer - around 1 in 2 of the population are likely to diagnosed at some point in their lives - much worse off than him, Gray has urged people to get themselves checked out if they think anything is wrong, no matter how minor they may feel it is.

"Obviously, the longer you leave it, the more dangerous it is and the more complicated it can become. Nobody wants to get bad news, but the earlier you get it, the more chance you have of getting out the other side with good news," he says.

"My message to people is don't be afraid to take that support and listen to people if that's what works for you. There's only one person that matters to that process and that will be you. Find a way to cope for yourself and don't be afraid to ask for help as you go through that journey."

The football family

Already making plans for next season with Newry, as he continued to do throughout his treatment, Gray says he's been overwhelmed by the messages of support from those both inside and outside the football world - including one high-profile figure.

"Through the last few months, you see the human side of football," he says.

"People say things, they offer support, they offer help in the strangest ways at times, in the best ways at times, and from people that maybe I least expected. People who were very respectful about boundaries as they obviously they knew what I was going through.

"I've only met Conrad Kirkwood (Irish FA President) face to face, in passing once or twice and I didn't know that he had pretty much the exact same thing that I had.

"I was just hitting my roughest patch probably at that time when we were speaking. He’s somebody you could relate to because he’s inside football, he has gone through it and has come out the other side and was able to tell me about how good it feels when you do come out that other side.

"Some of the people that I've come across and you would never know they were sick or had cancer and they're sharing their experiences with you. It maybe goes to show you that sometimes we judge people based on what we see or a comment they make in the press - and I'm no different than that.

"I was still managing the team, training the team, making comments and doing post-match interviews and people may have listened and though, ‘what is he talking about?’ not knowing what's going on in the background.

"But that support mechanism you get from football, it's powerful because it's so wide and has so many people involved in it and I think the one unanimous thing that we all can relate to is cancer because everybody knows somebody, unfortunately and they know the seriousness of it, and they know the impact that it has on just everyone's life that's involved. It goes to show you how we don't run around thinking we're unbreakable.

"Football and the people in it are a nice outlet. While they're not directly involved in the day to day of your life, that message or that phone call or just reaching out is powerful.

"You probably don't know how powerful it is until you're sitting where I was."

Moving forward - both on and off the pitch

With Newry's relegation the Championship confirmed prior to the final day of last season, Gray admits he wished things could have been different.

"What Newry signed up for was a manager coming in to try and give his all to keep the club in the Premiership. After three or four weeks, they got a manager that had his life turned upside down in the background, and while you tried your very best to focus a hundred percent on what we had committed to do with Newry, it would be remiss for me to say that Newry got the same concentration levels and the same all in that they would have got if I wasn't sick," he admits.

“I'd have been sitting here in normal circumstances, whingeing about being in the Championship. but it doesn't change anything in terms of what I would want to do because a month ago, two months ago, the prospect of not having any football was on the agenda, let alone anything else.

"Last season's chapter is still unfinished. You can never go back and finish that chapter. It's just cancer has taken that away from you. What it does is it makes you refocus on if you're going to open a new chapter, which we're going to do this season. It's not easy, but it's easier to fight the battles on the pitch than it is to fight the battles in the cancer centre in Belfast, that's for sure.

" I'm still in recovery, still not back 100 percent to where I want to be today. That doesn't impact what, or I hope won't impact, what football brings in the coming weeks and months.

"Six months ago, I had to say that I'm untouchable, I'll be here forever. Ideally the scenario for me is that I'll get my three month scan, we'll get the news that we want and I'll continue building myself back up to where I need to be so that I can 100 percent do I want to do.

"In football terms, that means getting back to your very best and making sure you are there to support players and your team, your staff to do what they need to do and they've been brilliant, but I'm pretty sure they'll be happy to see the manager back and take some of that pressure off them because that's not what they signed up for either.

"We're open and honest enough to know that we made the mistakes last year, whether that's me, the team, the players, individual, collective, it doesn't matter. We need to make sure that we don't inherit and continue to make the same mistakes going into next season," he adds.

"People keep talking to me about promotion and I'm at the point where I'm not talking about promotion. I'm talking about our target is to win the league. That's the best that you can do in the Championship, and that should be our target. That's not being disrespectful to anyone else in the league.

"We've done enough work this summer to help us bridge the gaps of some of the things that we've seen from January and we're confident that we can do that and have a good season."

What the future holds

I ask him how it will feel when he takes his place again in the dugout for the first competitive match of the 2024/25 campaign as Newry City AFC manager.

"I think it's like that chapter we talked about, isn't it? The book was supposed to finish, Barry Gray comes in, saves team and club and we stay in the Premiership.

"We end up being relegated. Not even to the point where they could boo me off the pitch because I wasn't there!" he jokes.

"As a manager, you're looking to establish yourself - a new manager for Newry. People could say, 'you've been here for six months', but for a large part of that, I wasn't here. So, it's like a starting point again. You've got connections to build with a new squad of players, with a new club, with a new support base that haven't seen me.

"The big thing for me is when I step back into the dugout, it's not Barry Gray the cancer patient, it's Barry Gray the football manager," he says firmly. "The cancer, like last year's relegation, is a thing of the past.

"You have to endure tough things and as long as you come out fighting on the other side, football or non-football, that's where we want to be. You can't put last year behind you until you finish the next season. Nobody will remember the tough times of what we've been through on the pitch if we're standing with promotion and a league championship. I'm looking back personally and I will be until we can get the all-clear.

"But we want to be sitting here next year talking about the big challenges of going back to the top tier, the challenges that we'll have in terms of player recruitment and budgets and finance and competing against full time teams and all the the new challenges that come with that level of football.

"That's the hassle we want and that's the hassle that the club needs. Newry is too big a club to survive in the Championship, in my opinion. That's no disrespect to any other club. It's just too big of an animal.

"Common sense tells you we're too well supported, we're a city club in terms of teams, players, recruitment, geography. It's just too big and has too much potential to want to exist just solely in the Championship. We have to make that clear to everybody. It might sound a wee bit arrogant, a wee bit cocky. We're not saying we're guaranteed to win the league. We're just saying we want to be in the top tier.

"There'll be good days, there'll be bad days," finishes Gray, almost referencing both football and his health as one.

"The reality of it is, as long as we keeping moving forward and our focus is solely on going back up to the Premiership and then retaining Premiership status, then everyone will continue to push in that same direction."