Paul Barrière, rugby league administrator, was born on June 8, 1920. He died on May 29, 2008, aged 87

Paul Barrière was the founding father of the rugby league World Cup, which first took place in his native France in 1954 and will be staged for a 13th time in Australia in October and November.

A former Resistance leader in the Aude valley region, Barrière was a bold and innovative battler on behalf of the suppressed league rugby code, which had been banned by the Vichy Government in 1940. Awarded the Croix de Guerre and Medaille de la Resistance for his wartime activities, Barrière successfully took the fight for rugby league’s reinstatement to the National Sports Committee in Paris, despite rugby union’s opposition. He was 27 when elected president of the French Rugby League Federation in 1947 and he presided over a golden age for rugby à treize in France during the 1950s. One of Barrière’s most notable achievements was persuading Puig Aubert, the game’s most famous French player, to swap codes for league; his influence on the game was profound.

Christine Tulloch, advertising executive, was born on January 12, 1951. She died on July 18, 2008, aged 57

Christine Tulloch was well known and respected in the media and advertising industry in Scotland.

In 1989 she resigned as a director of Hall Advertising, a division of Saatchi & Saatchi, then Scotland’s leading advertising agency, and joined a new agency formed by Jim Faulds. As head of media, and later marketing director and part-owner of the business, she played a key role in its success as it grew to become the largest agency outside London. As an expert media planner, she won what were then Scotland’s juiciest media accounts, including Royal Bank of Scotland, the Scottish Government and ScottishPower.

In 2003 she was found to have breast cancer. In sympathy with the terror she faced, her many friends resolved to face a terror of their own — heights — and parachute jumped from a plane. That resolution became a fundraising project for breast cancer charities called Booby Birds.

Norman Fletcher, boat builder and British powerboat racing champion, was born on February 21, 1927. He died on July 4, 2008, aged 81

Norman Fletcher was a British powerboat racing champion who designed his own racing boat when he became dissatisfied with the craft available and established one of the largest and most respected sports boat manufacturers in Europe, Fletcher International Sports Boats. He competed in national and international powerboat races throughout the 1960s and 1970s and in 1964 won the first British Class III Offshore Championship.

His first design used air under the boat to break down surface tension and he later developed a deep V hull design, creating a high-speed leisure craft. His boats set British water speed records in several classes. Norman himself set a British record of 79.61mph in 1974 in the Sports Inboards class. He promoted the sport and backed the first water ski racing world championship in Britain in 1979.