An Australian international sports star immortalized with the ‘Golden Glove’ award to his name has been sentenced to three years in jail for sexual offenses against a teenage girl.
Baseball hero Neil John Barrowcliff, affectionately known as ‘Barrows’ in sporting circles, has achieved the country’s highest sporting accolades over a fifty-year career.
But the 69-year-old award-winning player, coach and agent’s glittering career came crashing down in Parramatta District Court last month.
WhatsNew2Day Australia can reveal Barrowcliff admitted charges of sexually touching another person without consent, indecently assaulting a person under 16 and two counts of producing child abuse material.
Other charges of filming a person in a private act without their consent and of outraging the modesty of a person under 16 years of age were taken into account when sentencing.
Baseball hero Neil John Barrowcliff, affectionately known as ‘Barrows’ in sporting circles, has achieved the country’s highest sporting accolades over a fifty-year career. He has now collapsed
The offenses were committed between 2011 and 2022 in north-west and west Sydney and involved recording material on an Apple iPhone.
Barrowcliff was first arrested in 2022 and charged with two offences, and then faced with a further 27 charges last July.
Some of those charges were dropped in February of this year.
The former athlete is now appealing his sentence, which includes a two-year non-parole period.
Named after the former international baseball player immortalized in the University of Sydney’s ‘Golden Glove Award’. Above, a photo of Barrowcliff on the New South Wales baseball team in 1981.
That means he would remain behind bars until February 2026 if his application to the New South Wales District Court is unsuccessful.
Neil ‘Barrows’ Barrowcliff played for Hunter’s Hill and then the Sydney University baseball team for five years in the 1960s and 1970s.
He was a national team player in the 1980s and represented New South Wales for 12 seasons in the sport’s Claxton Shield.
The Sydney University Baseball Club named him in their 2004 “team of the century”.
They then immortalized him with their annual Neil Barrowcliff Golden Glove Award to commemorate his career.
The club and its parent entity, Sydney Uni Sport & Fitness, declined to confirm whether the award will continue to be awarded in Barrowcliff’s name.
But they acknowledged that “they have been made aware of some worrying accusations about one of the Club’s former students.”
“We would like to advise that the University of Sydney’s Safer Communities Office is available to any member of our community, past or present, who needs support or wishes to make a disclosure or complaint,” the statement said.
Neil Barrowcliff (above, centre) has been found guilty of producing child abuse material recorded on an iPhone, sexual touching and indecent assault on a person under 16. Up with a separate prize
Neil Barrowcliff has been jailed for child sex offenses for up to three years after pleading guilty to indecent assault and sexual touching as well as child abuse material.
Barrowcliff played for Australia three times and was School Sport Australia’s NSW baseball manager or coach from 1989 to 1997, and served as National Secretary from 2003 to 2019.
He was director of personal development, health and physical education at Pennant Hills High School from 2003-2014.
In 2004, the Australian Baseball Federation appointed him tournament director for its national competition.
In 2013, he was recognized by the Australian Major League Baseball Academy Program for his “formidably effective” leadership of its program.
He has worked as a sports teacher for the New South Wales Department of Education and Training and was tour manager for the Australian Schoolboys Tour in 2016 and sat on the School Sport Australia Board of Directors baseball committee the following year.
In 2018, Barrowcliff was executive director of the Oceana Under 18 Baseball Qualifying Team.
His appeal appears before Judge Ian Bourke at Parramatta District Court.
In 2004, the University of Sydney named Neil Barrowcliff as a groundskeeper in its “team of the century”.