Fate is a recurring theme in the life of Eamonn McManus.
The only son of an Irish immigrant family in St Helens, his father was 51 and his mother was 46 when he was born.
"I have three older sisters and it's fair to say I was a surprise baby," he says with a smile during our interview in one of the corporate hospitality boxes that overlooks the impressive 18,000-seater Langtree Park stadium.
His father Thomas spent three-and-a-half years as a Japanese PoW in War World Two and named his son after the famous Irish politician Éamon de Valera. "My father was a real driving force in my life because he never had an education," says Eamonn, now 58. "He left school at 13 and worked down the mines at 17 but became one of the most self-educated, knowledgeable men I've ever met."
Home was a three-bedroom council house and weekends were spent following his two favourite teams – St Helens Rugby League Club and Manchester United. "I used to go to our old ground at Knowsley Road," he says. "My first game was against Wakefield Trinity in 1964 or 1965. I remember going to Wembley in 1966 with some children from the street. I was 10."
Educated at St Mary's Primary in Blackbrook, he passed his 11-plus exam and went to West Park Grammar School in St Helens. "When I was 14 my father suggested going into law and I never really questioned it as the prospect quite excited me," he says. After getting straight A grades at A-level he studied law at St John's College, Cambridge University.
McManus says he's driven by a fear of failure and admits the move to university was a daunting one.
"I was 18 and it was the first time away from home and only the second time south of Birmingham," he says. "I went there with real trepidation. However I play rugby and sport is a great leveller."
He graduated with a 2:1 and became a solicitor with City firm Norton Rose in 1978. A few years later fate came knocking on his door again.
"I never intended to go into investment banking," he says. "When I went to London to work in the city it was always my intention to qualify in two years and return to the north. I was planning to join Addleshaws in Manchester.
"Three or four days before I was due to come back I was browsing the Financial Times, which was a newspaper I never read in those days, and an advert in the appointment pages said: 'Merchant banking; Hong Kong; looking to recruit trainee executives; aged 24-26; specialists in corporate finance in the city in a solicitors' or accounting firm'. I went to see the headhunter and he introduced himself as Orde Wingate. In World War Two there was a group of paratroopers called the Chindits, who were dropped behind enemy lines. It was set up and run by Orde Wingate. It transpired that this person was his son. I mentioned that my father's brother was a Chindit and we spoke for two hours about it. He then picked up the phone to Hong Kong and said 'I've got this man here called McManus and you need to take him'. He put the phone down. Nobody had mentioned the job, the bank or the package. A week later I was on a plane to Hong Kong."
He describes landing the job at HSBC's Asian Investment Bank as his "biggest break". "Before then I'd been abroad once," he says. "Hong Kong in 1982 was fantastically exciting. The job was amazingly interesting. The 1980s and 1990s were the golden years of Hong Kong prior to the handover to China. The refreshing thing was that in Hong Kong in business there were no obstacles. If something made sense it just got done."
The young McManus had a brief to offer mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advice to publicly listed companies in Hong Kong and on matters like floats. "It was pioneering stuff and it was a profession of the highest standards," he says, with real passion. "It's not like investment banking now."
And he threw himself into the culture. "I've eaten snakes, lizards and camel's hoof," he says. "A lot of the time you don't know what you're eating." He married a bank colleague called Betty, who came from a Hong Kong/Chinese family and the pair have two grown-up children.
A rising star at work, he was appointed head of Asian corporate finance in 1993 and then divisional chief executive officer. He became a member of the global investment banking committee in 1997.
He advised on many of Asia's largest M&A transactions (including HSBC's takeover of Midland Bank in 1994) and equity capital market transactions – including China's privatisation programme.
McManus said the change in China's economy during his two decades in Hong Kong was stunning. "The Chinese markets opened up in the early 1990s and I was heavily involved in the privatatisation of state-owned enterprises on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange," he says. "I remember my first business trip in China was in about 1992. It was pretty basic. On our transactions we weren't even going into Shanghai or Beijing. We were going where the industries were. One place we went to didn't even have bicycles on the street. It was horses and carts. It was pioneering, trail-blazing corporate finance."
Away from work, McManus was a talented rugby player in his own right and won 30 caps for Hong Kong and played in international sevens for six consecutive years.
Fate came calling again in the form of St Helens Rugby League Club, who were due to play in the World Club Series in Australia. "They were stopping off in Hong Kong for a day so I hosted them and got to meet the directors and players and took them for lunch on the top floor of HSBC's headquarters," McManus says. "I'd remained a fan when I was in Hong Kong I used to fly back for the big games. Not to miss an opportunity they got straight back in touch and asked if I wanted to 'invest' in the club. I put some money in in 1997 but never thought I'd be anything more than a passive investor."
In 2000, McManus called time on his 20-year career in investment banking in Hong Kong and returned to England. He was 45. "It was only in the last four or five years of my career that I made very good money indeed," he says. "The industry was different then. You didn't get these crazy short-term bonuses. It was all based on long-term performances."
Once back in England, where his children were educated, he was approached to provide financial advice to St Helens and join the board but was unconvinced.
"On a cursory glance of the financials it was a basket case," he says. "It really did look bleak and I didn't see a way out of it. It was losing about £1m a year in 2000 and the turnaround in the existing operation just wasn't there. If you saved costs you reduced costs on the team and the on-field performances would go down. The only answer was to survive long enough to build a new stadium. That's how the business model changed."
After becoming chairman he overhauled the board and made his priority the move to a new ground from its original home in Knowsley Road. "If it was purely based on my head I would never have joined so it had to be my heart also," he says. "I thought I would be able to build a new stadium and believed it would take two or three years. It actually took ten.
"We would have continued to lose money without a new stadium. If you were going to be St Helens you had to have a top team. If you have a top team it costs a certain amount of money and no matter what we did in terms of revenue we could not match the costs of the team and everything that went with it in the old stadium."
Knowsley Road was sold to part-fund the building of the £30m new stadium at Langtree Park, which is based on the site of the old United Glass factory where McManus used to work as a student. "Fate is a huge part of life," he points out.
The stadium move took place in 2012 but McManus says it took another two years to reap the benefits. The club's turnover is now £7m and boasts a thriving business, events and corporate hospitality sector.
McManus says: "My intention was always to get into a new stadium and I'd step down but having done the hard work and enjoying things thoroughly, and as long as the supporters want me, I'm prepared to stay.
"The fans are ultimately only interested in the team and the performances and so they should be. I'm a fan first. The real highlight was beating Wigan at Old Trafford in the Grand Final this October. Nobody expected us to win it. Even though we'd won Challenge Cups we'd not won the Grand Final for eight years. It was a massive change for St Helens to move to Langtree Park and we needed a trophy to christen the stadium."
However the game was overshadowed by a punching incident involving Wigan's Ben Flowers, which saw him banned for six months. After the punishment was announced McManus surprised many with a conciliatory statement saying Flowers' rehabilitation was "paramount".
"It's a game played by young men, the vast majority of which are good young men," he says. "People make mistakes. The reason I stay involved in rugby league is it's a game where the players are still in touch with reality and accountable to the fans. You can only survive in that environment if you are a good person."
McManus says it's a different world to football, where some players can earn more in a week than rugby league stars earn in a year.
"Football has become a virtual sport," he says. "I still support Manchester United but it's a sport that has changed beyond all recognition. Players, in particular, have no idea what the man on the street has to do to survive. They're in academies from the age of 12 and living in cosseted bubbles. They're mega rich by the age of 21, so are completely out of touch with reality. I don't have the depth of feeling to Man United and football as I used to but I still support them."
McManus says the salary cap in rugby league has been crucial to the success of the sport. "It means you have a fixed total amount of money that you can spend on your top 25 players," he says. "At the moment it's £1.9m plus prize monies from Super League and the Challenge Cup so it's between £1.9m and £2.5m. When people say 'abolish it' it would be the death knell of the sport.
"A top player is on £200k a year plus endorsements and bonuses. That's a year. They know they're going to have to do something after rugby league. We work very closely with our players. A lot of them do vocational training in other areas."
McManus is planning to spend more of the close season in Hong Kong, where both his children live, and leave the day-to-day running of the club to chief executive Mike Rush.
"Without Eamonn the club would not be here," Rush says. "Eamonn is still our front man. If you compare Knowsley Road with Langtree Park you would not believe it."
McManus says he's watched with interest the unprecedented public protests in Hong Kong, which he describes as "inevitable".
"I think it's a problem that China is going to face," he says. "China has opened up to the world in business. In China they've only got one freedom and that's to make money and they do it very well. After a period people are dissatisfied with just that and they want more. The man in the street in Hong Kong wants change.
"The wealth divide is now extraordinary. You have so many property billionaires. A tiny one-bedroom flat is £1m. You have hardworking, aspirational, successful, educated people who are struggling. I think a lot of the frustration is borne out of that."
It's a far cry from the quiet streets of St Helens, one of which – McManus Drive – is named after the chairman and is the official address of the rugby club he helped save.
"It was suggested they call it Eamonn McManus Drive but I made sure it was just 'McManus' because my wife has put up with so much it's as much her as me," he says, with a smile. "If we lose six games in a row the sign might get defaced.
"Sport is like that. It's fate. Disaster and triumph are always around the corner and you've got to approach it on that basis."
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Business is booming at St Helens Rugby League Club. The club employs 400 people and its corporate hospitality business is flourishing. Langtree Stadium has become a popular venue for conferences and events. Chief executive Mike Rush says this partly down to the decision to keep everything in-house, so they don't outsource things like catering.
