Andrew (Andy) Armstrong Mulligan, who was capped 22 times for Ireland at scrum-half, went on to work in journalism, became a senior EEC official and then founded international media business ventures in the US, died on February 24th aged 65.
In his first years on the Irish rugby team, beginning in 1956 aged 20, Andy Mulligan partnered Ireland's legendary out-half, Jack Kyle, who was then coming to the end of his playing days. Andy Mulligan's international career was to last for five years, becoming captain in the 1960 season.
But the highlight of his rugby career was the Lions tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1959 when he joined the squad as a substitute. He played brilliantly in the final test, which the Lions won 9-6. Also on the team were five other Irish players including Tony O'Reilly, with whom Andy Mulligan was to form a lifelong friendship.
Both showed entrepreneurial spirit by forming a company called Ireland International to market Irish products in countries they toured as players. On the Lions tour, the two entertained fellow players with a duo comedy act using mimicry and musical skills to poke fun at rugby officials.
Andy Mulligan was described in a biography of Tony O'Reilly as "a slim, willowy scrum-half and probably one of the few people in international rugby who was faster than O'Reilly on the burst. He was also an elegant man, both on the rugby field and off it, slightly affecting the air of a toff among the less cultured Irish team".
Andy Mulligan had spent little time in Ireland apart from holidays. He was born in Kasauli, India, on February 4th, 1936, where his father, Dr Hugh Waddell Mulligan, was a specialist in tropical diseases. His mother was Rita Aimee Armstrong.
He was educated in England at Greshams School in Holt and Magdalene College, Cambridge, gaining an honours degree in geography and anthropology while winning his blue in rugby. After graduation he played for Wanderers in Dublin and for London-Irish while working for the De La Rue company, helping to secure printing contracts.
When his international rugby career ended, he moved to France where he played for the Paris University Club and began a career in journalism. He first wrote entertaining articles on the French sporting scene for the London Observer, but gradually moved to news reporting for that newspaper and the Daily Telegraph from Paris. In 1964, he married Pia Ursula Schioler. Two books of his were published at this time, one in French called Ouvert l'Apres-Midi (1963) and The All Blacks (1964).
He became bureau chief for the Observer in Paris but was increasingly attracted to television, working first for ITN's News at Ten and then BBC's current affairs programme, Panorama, in London in 1969.
For the next four years Andy Mulligan travelled extensively, interviewing statesmen including Presidents Sadat of Egypt, Allende of Chile and Pompidou of France; Prime Ministers Ian Smith of Rhodesia and Britain's Edward Heath.
With his family roots in Donegal and Northern Ireland, Andy Mulligan was especially concerned about the worsening situation there in the early 1970s and made programmes which included interviews with the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patrick Hillery.
When Ireland joined the European Economic Community in January 1973, Andy Mulligan had Lynch's personal backing for one of the senior
EEC Commission posts allotted to Ireland. He became head of the division responsible for general reports, but his real talents lay elsewhere and the Commission wisely selected him in 1974 to become the director of press and information at the EEC delegation in Washington.
For the next seven years he worked with flair and zeal at informing the American public, and especially centres of power and learning, what the EEC was all about. One of his achievements was the setting up of a professionally produced and written magazine, Europe, to replace the free publication which had been mainly distributed on campuses.
He was proud of how the magazine steadily built up circulation and of his efforts to promote wider awareness of the existence and activities of the European Community. This was at a time when the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, said when he wanted to speak to the EC, he did not know who to telephone.
Andy Mulligan also organised valuable transatlantic seminars, bringing together media, diplomats and experts, one of the most memorable being at Waterville, Co Kerry, in 1979, during the Irish EC Presidency and attended by the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch.
With his outgoing personality and great social gifts, Andy Mulligan also made sure that such occasions included fun as well as work. His favourite relaxations were tennis, skiing, sailing and landscape painting.
He quickly learned the ways of Washington and saw that Irish charm was not enough to make the EC relevant to Americans. As he put it: "The answer was, and will remain, making the right noises to the right people at the right time. Otherwise Washington remains as impenetrable as the Forbidden City. Many are those in foreign missions who have come and gone without leaving a footprint . . . attention has to be earned here or it won't be given at all."
He never lost his close interest in Irish affairs while in Washington and played an important role in the setting up of Tony O'Reilly's American-Ireland Fund to foster cross-Border projects and help cultural development in both parts of Ireland.
After leaving the Commission in 1983, Andy Mulligan and his family remained in the US, where he set up Mulligan Communications and European Media. Some of his ideas for bridging the media gap between Europe and the US in the 1980s proved to be ahead of their time
and failed to attract the necessary investment, but he never gave up and used his wide range of contacts on both sides of the Atlantic to promote imaginative ideas.
Last year, he and his wife moved from Washington to Portland, Oregon.
Andy Mulligan is survived by his wife, Pia, sons, Finn and Joachim, daughters, Maia and Katrina; sister Shelagh (Montague Browne) and brother John.
Andrew Armstrong Mulligan: born 1936; died, February 2001