by
PJ (Paddy) Heneghan
In my secondary school years in Dublin’s Northside, 1939 to 1944, I played mainly Gaelic football and hurling. Gaelic football is rather like soccer, save that handling the ball is allowed, while the game of hurling is like hockey, but it allows handling and hand-passing the ball, and is played with a stick called a hurley.
My interest in rugby started when a schoolmate of mine, Michael Ryan, invited me in 1944, immediately after I had left secondary school, to join the Clontarf Rugby Club. I played with Clontarf for about two years, starting in 1945. Paddy Lawlor was a member of the club and also one of my classmates at secondary school, St Joseph’s, Fairview (Joey’s to Dubliners). In school he was a gentle giant. On the school’s Gaelic football team I had played left full back alongside Paddy, who was our full back. He was a fierce handful on both the Gaelic football and hurling fields, but on the rugby field a ferocious second row forward. He played rugby many times for Ireland and a number of times abroad for the British and Irish team, known as The Lions.
Starting in 1946 I went regularly as a spectator to high-level Rugby games, particularly to interprovincial and international matches, mostly at Lansdowne Road (now Aviva Stadium). International matches were resuming in Lansdowne Road after the end of the 1939-1944 war in Europe, and the first of such matches I saw took place in Dublin in 1946 between Leinster and the ANZACS (a team that comprised de-mobbed service men of the Australian and New Zealand armed forces). Ulster, to the best of my recollection, had been defeated 10-9 by the ANZACS in Belfast, but Leinster hoped to go one better. The ANZACS match against Leinster was a cracking affair. As the teams in the last seconds were heading for a drawn game, the Leinster out half Austin Carry (Old Wesley) went for a drop goal from midfield. We watched open-mouthed as the spinning ball went high and goalwards, only to strike the very top of the right hand post and fall wide. A truly prodigious kick deserving of a win, but it left Leinster with a mere draw.
The next match I saw was a renewal of the international series when Ireland played France at Lansdowne Road. France was still rebuilding following the war, and was not expected to give Ireland too stern a test. In fact an Irish cartoon artist in a Friday evening paper portrayed individually the French team he expected to see. He showed the French second row forwards rigged out like a pair of ballet dancers, with embroidered jerseys, finished off with frilly knickers. When the two players in question ran out on the field the following day, there was a gasp. Moga and Soro (what apt horror movie names they had!) weighed in at a combined weight of 33 stone. A Dublin ‘gurrier’, a type not often seen among the rugby elite, bellowed out from the back of the stand: “Jaysus, look at what Hitler did to them!”. The French won the match, though not handsomely. Ireland scored a penalty kick (three points) and the French managed a drop goal (four points). Latterly the law has been changed whereby a drop goal now counts only as three points.
In pre-war international rugby Ireland had not been considered a potent force. All that changed in the period 1947 to 1950 with the advent in 1947 of Jack Kyle at out half. I attended the 1947 match against England, ‘the auld enemy’ (often referred to as ‘the base, bloody and brutal Saxon’). An Irish journalist in a post-match commentary confessed that when he saw the young Jack Kyle running onto the field with the Irish team he shuddered at what might be in store for the youngster. He described Jack as looking like a tousled-haired school boy! He need not have worried about Jack. Ireland won the match 22-0, in no small measure due to the jinking, sidestepping and sheer genius of the tousled schoolboy!
In 1948 and 1949 I attended Ireland’s matches when they won back-to-back Triple Crowns (victories over England, Scotland and Wales in each season). In 1950 I travelled to London for the match against England in the expectation of seeing Ireland’s Three-in-a-Row materialize. The match was a grinding affair, with England leading 3 - 0 as the second half drew to a close. Then to our delight after a set scrum well into the second half, Ireland’s scrum half crossed the line for a try (5 points). But the score did not stand, The referee called the teams back to retake the scrum. Arguments still rage to this day about that decision to repeat the scrum. There was no further score in that match and thus ended the dream of Three Triple Crowns on the trot for Ireland.
An incident was to occur some forty years later to bring back to me the bitter memory of that disallowed try. In the 1980s I was the editor of a local magazine called The Templeogue Telegraph and was assisted by a group of young people in its distribution. I was at home one Saturday evening watching on TV a very tight rugby match with Ireland away to Wales. Ireland was holding a very slender lead going into the final quarter. Being just then short of an assistant for the delivery of our magazine in the nearby Springfield area, I decided to go out and do the work myself. To be honest, I was avoiding the possibility of a heart attack if Wales were to win the match in the final moments. Half way through my distribution round a middle-aged man opened his front door to take delivery of the magazine. The first question I asked was: Have you been watching the Welsh match? and the second: Who won? ‘I was,” he said, “and we won”. We got talking about rugby and I mentioned my trek to London in 1950 and asked whether he saw that match. “I did indeed and I should remember it,” he replied. “I was the one who scored that try.” I then realized I was talking to none other than John J Burges of the former Dublin club, Roslyn Park. I asked him of course why the referee had disallowed that try. “I often wondered,” he mused, “but I never got a convincing explanation”. Then he added graciously: “I expect the referee had been distracted by an off-the-ball incident as I scored, so he had not seen it.”
In my short, and I have to say inglorious, rugby career, I did on one occasion score a try against the Terenure College senior team. It happened on a day when the college’s pitch beside the Templeogue Road carried a dusting of snow from the previous night. The college rugby team was preparing for the final of the schools’ Leinster Senior Cup, and the Clontarf club agreed to send out a team to give them some pre-match practice. I was in my usual place at second row forward on the Clontarf 3B team for that match. I have to confess that in my early playing days my grasp of the laws of rugby was poor. I often didn’t know what was going on. For me, it was organized chaos, with players running around all over the place - good exercise, though. By the way, never embarrass yourself in the company of upper class rugby twits by referring to the rules of rugby: refer always to the laws of rugby. Most of us plebs, however, still call them rules, and many casual viewers are even surprised to hear that rugby has rules – they think that the referees make them up as they go along.
I digress, so let’s get back to my try. At the time this particular game was played I was living in the north side of Dublin. I cycled southwards and managed to find Terenure and the college. The game proceeded as usual, which for me involved spending most of the eighty minutes bending my body into various contortions in set scrums, while my head was being mangled between the butts of the hooker and of one or other of the front row forwards. This explains why second row forwards do not score many tries.
Midway through the match I found myself holding in my hands the ball which had arrived by way of a stray pass. I was close to the score line, and I lunged forward to ground the ball. This coincided with my being tackled by an on-coming opponent who was quickly joined by his mates and submerged me with my hand firmly on the score line. Then from behind I was immediately submerged by my own team mates.
The referee whistled and gave a penalty kick to the opposing team. But hang on …! Hadn’t I scored a try? At our modest level of playing the game, one does not ask referees to explain their decisions. I reserved my questions until shower time.
My team mates told me what had actually happened. I had grounded the ball on what is now called the 5 meter line. So it wasn’t a try! The actual score line was 5 meters ahead of me, but partly obscured by the snow and maybe that was how you missed it. (SpecSavers had not yet come to Dublin – that scene would have made a good ad.) They went on to tell me that when you are tackled outfield and put the ball on the ground, your opponents start a ruck but your own players will surround you from behind, starting a maul, which pushes and shoves against the opponents, digging in with their heels to retrieve the ball. In the maul they are not allowed to use their hands. The law is that you should when grounded have left the ball where it was, rolled away from under the maul, got to your feet again and joined the maul from an on-side position to regain possession of the ball. “You just didn’t roll away, did you?”they said. That was why the referee gave the penalty against us. “Did you get all that, you dope?” They never actually told me what the difference was between a ruck and maul, but having gone through the experience, I know now. What I wrote may be as clear as mud to the average reader, but if anyone wants to know the difference between a ruck and a maul, or a set scrum and a loose scrum, go to Wikipaedia.
I don’t recall who won the match against the Terenure College team but I can say that they were a nice bunch of lads and all played their rugby in truly flawless, gentlemanly and sportsmanlike fashion, and strictly according to the rules, qualities not associated with the then Clontarf 3Bs. The penalty calls against Terenure were few and far between, while our tally mounted up.
My brief time with Clontarf served to broaden my mind and increase my store of knowledge. Indeed it gave me an insight into life itself, where you often get the experience before you get the lesson. It also taught me that it pays to know the basic rules in any sphere of life.
And playing rugby taught me it’s better still to know all the rules
PJ (Paddy) Heneghan
In my secondary school years in Dublin’s Northside, 1939 to 1944, I played mainly Gaelic football and hurling. Gaelic football is rather like soccer, save that handling the ball is allowed, while the game of hurling is like hockey, but it allows handling and hand-passing the ball, and is played with a stick called a hurley.
My interest in rugby started when a schoolmate of mine, Michael Ryan, invited me in 1944, immediately after I had left secondary school, to join the Clontarf Rugby Club. I played with Clontarf for about two years, starting in 1945. Paddy Lawlor was a member of the club and also one of my classmates at secondary school, St Joseph’s, Fairview (Joey’s to Dubliners). In school he was a gentle giant. On the school’s Gaelic football team I had played left full back alongside Paddy, who was our full back. He was a fierce handful on both the Gaelic football and hurling fields, but on the rugby field a ferocious second row forward. He played rugby many times for Ireland and a number of times abroad for the British and Irish team, known as The Lions.
Starting in 1946 I went regularly as a spectator to high-level Rugby games, particularly to interprovincial and international matches, mostly at Lansdowne Road (now Aviva Stadium). International matches were resuming in Lansdowne Road after the end of the 1939-1944 war in Europe, and the first of such matches I saw took place in Dublin in 1946 between Leinster and the ANZACS (a team that comprised de-mobbed service men of the Australian and New Zealand armed forces). Ulster, to the best of my recollection, had been defeated 10-9 by the ANZACS in Belfast, but Leinster hoped to go one better. The ANZACS match against Leinster was a cracking affair. As the teams in the last seconds were heading for a drawn game, the Leinster out half Austin Carry (Old Wesley) went for a drop goal from midfield. We watched open-mouthed as the spinning ball went high and goalwards, only to strike the very top of the right hand post and fall wide. A truly prodigious kick deserving of a win, but it left Leinster with a mere draw.
The next match I saw was a renewal of the international series when Ireland played France at Lansdowne Road. France was still rebuilding following the war, and was not expected to give Ireland too stern a test. In fact an Irish cartoon artist in a Friday evening paper portrayed individually the French team he expected to see. He showed the French second row forwards rigged out like a pair of ballet dancers, with embroidered jerseys, finished off with frilly knickers. When the two players in question ran out on the field the following day, there was a gasp. Moga and Soro (what apt horror movie names they had!) weighed in at a combined weight of 33 stone. A Dublin ‘gurrier’, a type not often seen among the rugby elite, bellowed out from the back of the stand: “Jaysus, look at what Hitler did to them!”. The French won the match, though not handsomely. Ireland scored a penalty kick (three points) and the French managed a drop goal (four points). Latterly the law has been changed whereby a drop goal now counts only as three points.
In pre-war international rugby Ireland had not been considered a potent force. All that changed in the period 1947 to 1950 with the advent in 1947 of Jack Kyle at out half. I attended the 1947 match against England, ‘the auld enemy’ (often referred to as ‘the base, bloody and brutal Saxon’). An Irish journalist in a post-match commentary confessed that when he saw the young Jack Kyle running onto the field with the Irish team he shuddered at what might be in store for the youngster. He described Jack as looking like a tousled-haired school boy! He need not have worried about Jack. Ireland won the match 22-0, in no small measure due to the jinking, sidestepping and sheer genius of the tousled schoolboy!
In 1948 and 1949 I attended Ireland’s matches when they won back-to-back Triple Crowns (victories over England, Scotland and Wales in each season). In 1950 I travelled to London for the match against England in the expectation of seeing Ireland’s Three-in-a-Row materialize. The match was a grinding affair, with England leading 3 - 0 as the second half drew to a close. Then to our delight after a set scrum well into the second half, Ireland’s scrum half crossed the line for a try (5 points). But the score did not stand, The referee called the teams back to retake the scrum. Arguments still rage to this day about that decision to repeat the scrum. There was no further score in that match and thus ended the dream of Three Triple Crowns on the trot for Ireland.
An incident was to occur some forty years later to bring back to me the bitter memory of that disallowed try. In the 1980s I was the editor of a local magazine called The Templeogue Telegraph and was assisted by a group of young people in its distribution. I was at home one Saturday evening watching on TV a very tight rugby match with Ireland away to Wales. Ireland was holding a very slender lead going into the final quarter. Being just then short of an assistant for the delivery of our magazine in the nearby Springfield area, I decided to go out and do the work myself. To be honest, I was avoiding the possibility of a heart attack if Wales were to win the match in the final moments. Half way through my distribution round a middle-aged man opened his front door to take delivery of the magazine. The first question I asked was: Have you been watching the Welsh match? and the second: Who won? ‘I was,” he said, “and we won”. We got talking about rugby and I mentioned my trek to London in 1950 and asked whether he saw that match. “I did indeed and I should remember it,” he replied. “I was the one who scored that try.” I then realized I was talking to none other than John J Burges of the former Dublin club, Roslyn Park. I asked him of course why the referee had disallowed that try. “I often wondered,” he mused, “but I never got a convincing explanation”. Then he added graciously: “I expect the referee had been distracted by an off-the-ball incident as I scored, so he had not seen it.”
In my short, and I have to say inglorious, rugby career, I did on one occasion score a try against the Terenure College senior team. It happened on a day when the college’s pitch beside the Templeogue Road carried a dusting of snow from the previous night. The college rugby team was preparing for the final of the schools’ Leinster Senior Cup, and the Clontarf club agreed to send out a team to give them some pre-match practice. I was in my usual place at second row forward on the Clontarf 3B team for that match. I have to confess that in my early playing days my grasp of the laws of rugby was poor. I often didn’t know what was going on. For me, it was organized chaos, with players running around all over the place - good exercise, though. By the way, never embarrass yourself in the company of upper class rugby twits by referring to the rules of rugby: refer always to the laws of rugby. Most of us plebs, however, still call them rules, and many casual viewers are even surprised to hear that rugby has rules – they think that the referees make them up as they go along.
I digress, so let’s get back to my try. At the time this particular game was played I was living in the north side of Dublin. I cycled southwards and managed to find Terenure and the college. The game proceeded as usual, which for me involved spending most of the eighty minutes bending my body into various contortions in set scrums, while my head was being mangled between the butts of the hooker and of one or other of the front row forwards. This explains why second row forwards do not score many tries.
Midway through the match I found myself holding in my hands the ball which had arrived by way of a stray pass. I was close to the score line, and I lunged forward to ground the ball. This coincided with my being tackled by an on-coming opponent who was quickly joined by his mates and submerged me with my hand firmly on the score line. Then from behind I was immediately submerged by my own team mates.
The referee whistled and gave a penalty kick to the opposing team. But hang on …! Hadn’t I scored a try? At our modest level of playing the game, one does not ask referees to explain their decisions. I reserved my questions until shower time.
My team mates told me what had actually happened. I had grounded the ball on what is now called the 5 meter line. So it wasn’t a try! The actual score line was 5 meters ahead of me, but partly obscured by the snow and maybe that was how you missed it. (SpecSavers had not yet come to Dublin – that scene would have made a good ad.) They went on to tell me that when you are tackled outfield and put the ball on the ground, your opponents start a ruck but your own players will surround you from behind, starting a maul, which pushes and shoves against the opponents, digging in with their heels to retrieve the ball. In the maul they are not allowed to use their hands. The law is that you should when grounded have left the ball where it was, rolled away from under the maul, got to your feet again and joined the maul from an on-side position to regain possession of the ball. “You just didn’t roll away, did you?”they said. That was why the referee gave the penalty against us. “Did you get all that, you dope?” They never actually told me what the difference was between a ruck and maul, but having gone through the experience, I know now. What I wrote may be as clear as mud to the average reader, but if anyone wants to know the difference between a ruck and a maul, or a set scrum and a loose scrum, go to Wikipaedia.
I don’t recall who won the match against the Terenure College team but I can say that they were a nice bunch of lads and all played their rugby in truly flawless, gentlemanly and sportsmanlike fashion, and strictly according to the rules, qualities not associated with the then Clontarf 3Bs. The penalty calls against Terenure were few and far between, while our tally mounted up.
My brief time with Clontarf served to broaden my mind and increase my store of knowledge. Indeed it gave me an insight into life itself, where you often get the experience before you get the lesson. It also taught me that it pays to know the basic rules in any sphere of life.
And playing rugby taught me it’s better still to know all the rules
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