Steve Phythian obituary - Swinton lad and rugby man

'He became a bit of a local hero'

Dear members — most of our reporting this week has been about local politics — including our briefing on Monday, our members-only deep dive on Wednesday and our podcast yesterday. We’ll return to that terrain in the months ahead, so if you have any juicy tips or insights, please drop us a line.

Today we have something very different to end the week — an obituary. We used to do mini obits in the Monday briefings, but we realised they didn’t do proper justice to a person’s life. Then a few months ago, Mike Emmerich wrote a lovely tribute to Peter Smith, the former Wigan council leader, and it made us think we should do that more regularly. So from now on, we’re going to publish one obituary a month (roughly) — sometimes of well-known figures, and sometimes of people who might just be known very locally in their community, or not known at all.

Today’s is about a man called Steve Phythian — a rugby league legend in one particular bit of Salford who once gave our writer Jack Dulhanty a pep …