Tony O’Reilly has passed away at the age of 88 and this week’s business pages will pay tribute to a titan from the corporate world who found commercial gold with Kerrygold and built a beanhill with Heinz. So it is a sign of a remarkably well-lived life that his name will always have a place in the pantheon of Irish sporting heroes and will cause a grin when the classic old-school rugby anecdotes are told.
As a player good enough to be selected as the youngest lion in history when he was selected to tour South Africa as a teenager in 1955, O’Reilly might have reached even higher heights in the game had his burgeoning business career not materialized at the age of 26. However, there was to be one last spontaneous hooray when he was recalled seven years after to face England at Twickenham.
Before the match, the originally selected Irish winger Ben Brown withdrew health issue, and O’Reilly, who is now more familiar with the business lunch table than with the rugby field, was hastily summoned to the field of the Honorable Artillery Company in the City of London on Friday morning before the match. After he duly showed up in a chauffeured Mercedes, the training did not go very well. “O’Reilly’s cheeks flickered like white jelly, sweat ran down his face like drops of water outside a window,” recalls Willie John McBride, captain of Ireland. “Finally, he turned to me and blew the words:” I’m a little worried about tomorrow.’”
Mcbride’s reaction to O’Reilly’s concern about defending himself against fast English winger Keith Fielding: “I wouldn’t worry… if he walks around you, he will be damn tired” – it was followed by the suggestion that his best option to confuse his opponent is to “shake your cheeks against him”. Sure enough, Ireland lost 9-3, with O’Reilly at one point receiving a brutal ground treatment from the English forwards. As he was recovering on the ground, an Irish voice sounded from the crowd: “and while you’re at it, why don’t you kick his damn driver as well.”
However, he was the same man whose size and speed had once made him a widely admired international athlete. He scored 16 tries on the 1955 Tour of South Africa and his Irish team-mate Ray McLoughlin never forgot a certain sprint session with an athletics coach in Dublin in 1959. “There was a dispute about the times, so the coach gave me the watch. O’Reilly was 9.7 for 100 yards. He ran in football boots, on grass and there were no starting blocks. If you had made Tony a professional player, he would have been one of the greatest in the world.”
O’Reilly won 29 Irish international matches, but since this was a professional peril for the wingers of that time, he did not always see a large amount of rude balls. For good reason, his best rugby is said to have been played for the Lions, with whom he also toured New Zealand in 1959, scoring a record 22 tries. As another Irish legend, Tom Kiernan, said in Tom England’s beautiful book no Borders: Playing Rugby for Ireland, he was strong and fast enough to worry everyone: “His grips, his positioning and his kicks were top notch and I always felt that his stature intimidated the opposition. It was said of O’Reilly that no other player alone could obstruct an entire opposing back line.”
He possessed the gift of the gab from a very young age, especially when he played in a U9 match at Belvedere College. When his team led 30-6, his coach asked him to pass the ball more in the second half to make the game less one-sided and give the opponent a chance. “Ah, father, you’re just wasting your time. If I pass it, they will hit it or drop it.”His business acumen also manifested itself at the age of seven, when he received an orange, a luxury of war, after being the only boy in his class to hold Holy Communion. “After eating the center, I sold the skin for a penny apiece, thereby showing a propensity for commercial deception, which has not left me since.”