Tony O’Reilly: ‘You need to know how to lose to know how to live’

“You win and you lose, and if you don’t know how to lose you don’t know how to live,” said Tony O’Reilly in an address to friends and former team-mates at a gathering at the Old Belvedere Rugby Club in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, on Saturday afternoon for the opening of a new function room named in his honour.

The 81-year-old, on a rare trip home to Ireland from France, where he now lives, was in fine spirits and good health as he regaled club members with tales from his rugby-playing past.

They laughed as he shared an experience he had as he lined up to play for Ireland against Wales in an international more than 50 years ago. When an opponent gestured towards him in the tunnel before the match a team-mate asked who he was.

“He used to be Tony O’Reilly,” came the response, a withering reference to his failing prowess on the rugby pitch.

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Fast forward five decades and Tony O'Reilly isn't Tony O'Reilly any more. He is Sir Anthony O'Reilly, and on his first trip to Ireland in more than four years.

At the event, he did not address the controversy currently swirling around Independent News and Media (INM), of which he was once the majority shareholder, but his son Gavin, who resigned as chief executive of INM in 2012, told The Irish Times that his father had been keeping abreast of the developments in recent weeks.

He said O’Reilly senior had been “shocked and disappointed” by what he had read and “concerned about all the colleagues that worked for him, people who soldiered with us in good days and bad days”.

Saturday was definitely one of the good days for the O’Reillys.

“I could not possibly have dreamt of a nicer homecoming than [what] you have given me,” Sir Anthony told the gathering, which included former Irish internationals, Lions team-mates and men who had played alongside him in school and with Old Belvedere.

Warm-up

Before the guest of honour arrived, club members in suits and blazers stood on a sun-kissed terrace and half-heartedly watched a game between Old Belvedere and the Dublin Dogos, a new team made up largely of ex-pats from all over the world.

A choir made up of boys from Belvedere College arrived and looked less than pleased to be wearing their school uniforms on a sunny Saturday afternoon. A small group of them snuck out on to the terrace to watch the match and do the Floss Dance. Their freedom did not last long and seconds later they were ordered back into the Old Belvedere clubhouse to warm up and practise.

An expressive Italian family in shorts and T-shirts watched the crowds arriving at the club to honour Sir Anthony with something approaching bemusement. When asked why she was there, the mother of the family said she was here to cheer “the team in blue. They are Belvedere, no?”

“No,” said a man in a blazer with shiny buttons. He explained that Belvedere were the team in black and white.

“Oh, then our son is not playing for Belvedere like I thought. He is playing for the blue team, but I thought that as Belvedere is an Italian word that that must be his team.”

Watching alongside the Italians was a man who admitted to being something of an interloper, having played with Bective in the 1980s. He was here to honour Sir Anthony.

“It’s terribly sad what happened to him after everything he put into the country,” he said, referencing the one-time billionaire’s financial fall from grace.

Inside, the man he was referring to in hushed tones was full of smiles and shaking hands with well-wishers, showing the room, perhaps, that he had indeed learned how to win, how to lose and how to live.