Sir, – As a youngster growing up in Dublin, the hero of all the males in my family and school was Jackie Kyle. I used to go to Lansdowne Road, stand for hours in the schoolboy stand and watch him mesmerise the opposition with his jinking runs and he seemed to single handedly orchestrate their defeat. After the match, I would wait for him to come out of the dressing room to get his autograph. He never complained that this was, as he probably knew, the 10th autograph he had signed for me and just simply asked “What’s your name, son?” and signed “To Jimmy, best wishes Jackie Kyle”.
When I played rugby with my brothers I always wanted to be Jackie Kyle playing outhalf for Ireland. They could have the rest of the options to themselves. I often dreamed of scoring a try in the last minute to win the Triple Crown. I was devastated when he retired.
Years later and I was in my forties and working with John O’Shea in Goal. John arranged sports events to raise money for the third world and there was a star-studded group of rugby players helping at various functions. Moss Keane, Ray McLoughlin, Barry John, Gareth Edwards, Gerald Davies, Tom Grace and many others all answered the call. One night I heard that among those helping would be Jackie Kyle. I couldn’t wait to meet him and talk about all the tries he scored and all those moments we shared. I did meet him and he was very gracious and pleasant but he did’t seem to want to talk about rugby. All he wanted to talk about was the great work John O’Shea was doing through sport in Goal. Despite my initial disappointment in this, I began later to realise that by seeing things this way and by his own life’s dedication to the poor in Africa, he was an even bigger hero than I had initially thought. – Yours, etc,
JIMMY CASEY,
Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.