Humbled by ghost of Kiwis' past

Pilgrimage to RameltonKeith Duggan looked on as skipper Tana Umaga and his men stood in the arched doorway of New Zealand's rugby past in the village of Ramelton

Among the memorabilia the All-Blacks will take with them on the next leg of their centenary tour will be a bottle of commemorative Tyrconnell whiskey and a potion of Gartan clay. The soil, taken from the banks of the stream where St Colmcille was born in the sixth century, reputedly charms and protects its carriers from fire, water and general afflictions.

"In fact, about the only time it doesn't work is when you are playing against Ireland in rugby," Denis Faulkner of Letterkenny Rugby Club told a delighted Conrad Smith when presenting him with the potion on Wednesday afternoon. As someone in the crowd then remarked, it was a shame Dave Gallaher, the man whose memory the All-Blacks are honouring on this winter tour, did not have a pocketful of Gartan clay on the death fields of Passchendaele in October, 1917.

A black-and-white film image of the Donegal native, with his stern military bearing and handlebar moustache, flickered over the local rugby man and the famous All-Black as they shook hands before a packed arena. It was one of the many strange moments of a visit that has already acquired an unbelievable hue. Rugby flourishes in such precise citadels in Ireland that the ramshackle and gorgeous village of Ramelton was perhaps the least likely place in the 32 counties the All-Blacks might have visited, was it not for the quirk of emigration and fate.

The revival of interest in the extraordinarily rich and bold life of Dave Gallaher seems to have occurred organically. But with the wistful timing of a century's passing, it brought together the two extremes of rugby union. The All-Blacks are, of course, the great innovators and masters of the sport and their performance of the Haka in Lansdowne Road this afternoon remains perhaps the most evocative tradition to have survived the ravages of modern sport.

Donegal rugby is such that when Noel Conlon, a youngster from the Aranmore Island, somehow gained an obsession with the oval ball, he had to take the ferry in to the mainland with his mother on a blustery Friday night. They stayed in a bed and breakfast to make it to the under-16 bus for a game in distant Carrickfergus at half-past eight on Saturday morning. Bad weather cancelled the ferry that night so they did not make it home until Sunday.

Three years on, Conlon makes that weekend trip on his own. There were days in the late 1980s when Jim Moore, a local garda, had to radio to his colleagues for sightings of a missing prop forward or a reluctant winger to cobble 15 players for a long drive to Belfast where a certain whipping awaited them. Some days they travelled with 12 or 13 players. "But we always travelled," says Faulkner.

It was not so much a question of getting on the Letterkenny IV, it was retiring from it that was the tricky part. Players rumbled on long after their hips, their hearts and their doctors warned them otherwise. So this week's crossing of the most extravagant talents in rugby unions with a humble club who have eked out an existence from decade to decade for sheer love of the game was a rarity.

It was not that whatever rugby talent existed in Donegal rattled around in Dave Gallaher's mighty frame. The classy 1980s All-Blacks fullback John Gallagher also has parentage in the northwest. But the Original Gallaher - the family dropped the "g" shortly after the Lady Jocyln docked in the Bay of Plenty - has, through dint of circumstance and Gallaher's bravery, become the emblem of what the All-Blacks represent beyond their main priority of playing rugby as close to perfection as possible.

"It gives it all a bit of meaning," Smith said as evening fell across Letterkenny's neon downscape and the working traffic scattered for Milford, for Glenties and the darkened glens.

"You know sometimes you are just playing rugby the whole time and you wonder what it is all about. We talked about this trip and a lot of us really wanted to come. I thought it would be great to see a bit of the countryside and mark this anniversary and see where Dave Gallaher came from. We have all learned a lot about him since playing the French last year. And I think he matters not just because he was an All Black but because he gave his life for his country. And it feels like we are representing the All Blacks and also all those Kiwi war veterans back home. So it has been very moving to return here in these circumstances."

When the All Blacks touring party huddled into their Aer Arann plane for Wednesday's flight to Donegal, they had only a vague understanding of what lay ahead. It was probably only when they stood and posed for photographs on the same staircase that Gallaher had played on in the late 1870s and walked around the Ramelton street as the November night closed around them that the Originals captain became something more than a mythical figure.

The broad outline of Gallaher's brief and action-packed life have been well documented in recent years. His parents left behind a successful drapery to travel to New Zealand in 1878 because, reckoned one of Gallaher's descendants, "it was probably the place to be going at that time".

The emigration was tinged with sadness in that they were forced to leave behind their youngest boy, James Patrick, of whom no records survive. Norman Gallagher, a Ramelton man whose bloodlines are those of the famous All Black believes that the youngest sibling must have passed away young.

"Possibly the same year as the family left," he said after Wednesday night's reception.

"I would say it is unlikely he emigrated because there is nothing about him."

It was the death of another brother in the first World War that prompted Gallaher, distraught and determined to make atonement, to volunteer for service at the age of 44.

His fame as a rugby player was already assured by then and he had assumed the role of New Zealand selector. He was shot in the face in one of those doomed, insanely brave dawn charges across no man's land that characterised warfare on the western front. Gallaher was fortunate to be carried from the wasteland but as he lay dying back in the trench medical room, a doctor told another casualty "That's Dave Gallaher, the famous All Black lying there."

His passing was greeted as a national tragedy in New Zealand and as the Auckland Star noted in its obituary, he was one of those unbelievably dramatic figures who seemed so commonplace around the period of the Great War. In sport, he was equally dynamic and valorous.

"He was a big, strong, dashing, agile man who was out with all his power to spoil the opposing halfback, to disorganise the defence and attack, and to open up play for his own men behind him," reads the piece.

"Standing six feet in height, 13 stone in weight, hard as nails, fast and full of dash, he bolted from the mark every time, played right up to the whistle and stopped for nothing big or small. The Britishers stood aghast at this style of play.

"They only saw Gallaher descending like fury on the British halves, bumping them and robbing them, and opening up the lightning passing bout that ended in big scores for the black-garbed stranger team."

It may comfort Tana Umaga, who came close to victimisation in the poisonous and, in retrospect, somewhat sensationalised opening of the Lions tours that "Britishers" have always been aghast at the play of All Blacks captains. But as the leader of the All Blacks stood in the pebbledash arched doorway of New Zealand's rugby past, surrounded by the inevitable circus of camera lights and flashing bulbs, there was something genuinely substantial and touching about the occasion.

"Funny," said someone outside the local butcher's "the way history comes full circle". And it was tantalising to imagine what Gallaher would have made of it all if, as a typical late 18th century youngster, he could have been permitted a brief glimpse into Wednesday night's commemoration.For he was no stranger to fuss. As the Auckland Star obituary put it, in a statement that carries strange echoes of the concerns that preoccupy today's rugby lights, he became used to close attention.

"Of course the commercial world did not miss the opportunity, and "Gallaher" brand of pipes, tobaccos, braces, etc, appeared in the advertisement columns of newspapers, coincident with grave discussions on Gallaher's method of play. As on an instance of the final decision on Gallaher, one may mention the statement of an Anglo-French player and critic in the London Daily Express.

"In Gallaher," he writes "they have a captain and a player whose claims to lead such a great contingent has been undeniable. His tact, under trying circumstances, has never failed him."

Umaga's humour and humility during the visit to Donegal distinguished him as a worthy heir to the Originals captain and whether it surprised people that he was not the scowling demon tackler of popular portrayal, they were certainly charmed by him.

But then, what made the visit so unique was that it somehow managed to blend modern stardom with country hospitality in a very natural and easy way. That New Zealand is such a vast and rural country and the weather and wintry greenness of Donegal bridged the gap of the hemispheres.

"This is similar to where I started, really," said Sir Brian Lochore, the chiselled, charismatic All Blacks captain of 1960s vintage.

"In the country areas where you have the little club room in the corner of a paddock. Lots of places in New Zealand are exactly like this and places like this are the foundation of our game."

The tall flanker, Jerry Collins, with his distinctive blonde top hair-style and high wattage smile that made grannies swoon and babies giggle, was the runaway hit of the afternoon. He could not do enough - literally.

"That blond buck is just a tight arse," complained one teenage autograph hunter on the rugby field as Collins tried to deal with around one hundred youngsters all demanding that he give his signature - now.

"He'll not sign me shorts."

Just before the bus departed the Ramelton town hall for a plane flight that was already perilously delayed, Collins nipped back in to use the bathroom and was found 10 minutes later by a search party posing for photographs in the rain.

"This was just a great thing to do," he said. "Getting out of the city and meeting the people up here. Boy, the air is fresh. Bit chilly. But that's okay."

And it was. A heavy, misty night had closed in by the time the superstars exited the village, the blaze of blue motorbike lights and sirens fading to leave the gentle orange glow of the Ramelton streetlights.

"We'll not see a night like that again," said one woman as she was going home.

That was the thing. It was a one off. The visit of the All Blacks won't revolutionise rugby in Donegal and it won't alter the intensity of the action in Dublin this afternoon. But it did deepen the All Black aura that, for all its magnificence, was sometimes perceived as somewhat distant and austere.

They could not have been better ambassadors. By eight o'clock, Ramelton was so damp and quiet the entire visit might have been a dream. A brief howl of delight could be heard from O'Shaughnessy's pub. Glasgow Celtic, a deep passion in this part of the country, had scored first in the Old Firm derby.

For a few hours, rugby fever had thrown this quiet corner of Donegal off its axis but by nightfall, the Bhoys again laid their eternal claim to the place where Dave Gallaher took his first steps to greatness.