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Charlie William Carr began his Rugby League career with the Vickerstown junior side before moving to Askam where he enhanced a growing reputation in the amateur game. A centre three-quarter, he was clearly a rare talent and was snapped up by Barrow as a professional in October 1922.
He played for the club until his retirement, in February 1934, by which time he had played 394 first-team matches and scored 160 tries and 45 goals (a total of 570 points).
Charlie would use his hips to great effect to bounce off would-be tacklers and had that rare ability, through a perfectly timed pass, to give his wingman a clear and unopposed run to the line.
It is no coincidence that some of the wingers from that era (for example Walter Scott and Jack Woods) who played along side Charlie Carr are still today up there among the club’s all-time leading try scorers. Indeed, Charlie himself is the fifth highest Barrow try scorer of all time.
Despite playing in what was, generally speaking, an unsuccessful Barrow team, he (along with team mate Bill Burgess) was widely acknowledged throughout the game as a star performer.
Indeed, it was written of Barrow after one particularly bad season in the in the 1920s: “One shudders to think what the club would have done without the generalship of Burgess and the brilliance of Carr.” Summing up the 1920s as a complete decade and bemoaning the lack of success in the period, another writer said: “the club could not find players of sufficient calibre to compliment its two stars (Carr and Burgess).”
A couple of losing appearances in Challenge Cup semi-finals (1922 and 1930) were the nearest Charlie came to winning a major trophy with Barrow RFC, but his talents were recognised, and his ability rewarded, by the county and international selectors on numerous occasions and he never betrayed their faith in him. He played 16 times for Lancashire (15 tries and 3 goals), 8 times for England (9 tries) and played for Great Britain in 7 Test matches (6 tries). He toured Australasia in 1924 and, in addition to Test matches, appeared in 13 other minor tour matches (6 tries). These are phenomenal scoring achievements by a centre three-quarter at that level in an era when big scores were not commonplace.
One unusual fact about his Lancashire career is that it should never have been! Shortly after he had made his debut for the Red Rose County it was discovered that he was actually a Yorkshireman. The confusion arose because he had been born in Hull but his family moved to Barrow when he was a small boy. He was offered the chance to switch his allegiance to the White Rose but declined and the authorities permitted him to continue to represent Lancashire.
