The life of an Irish teenage rugby star cut short: ‘I pulled the sheet back and there he was in his kit’

On Saturday, March 27th, 2004, Ian McCall had completed a morning’s work when he sat down to watch Ireland’s Triple Crown match against Scotland in the Six Nations Championship. About 20 minutes into the game his phone rang.

He didn’t recognise the voice. It was that of Philip Browne, chief executive of the IRFU. Ian remembers the words that tumbled out. “We have lost John,” said Browne. Confused, Ian replied: “I said to him, ‘what do you mean you have lost, John?’ He said: ‘John died on the pitch in Durban, I am so sorry.”

John McCall was the middle child of three to Ian and Carolyn, alongside older sister Rebecca and younger brother James. John collapsed and died during the first half of Ireland’s opening match of the under-19 World Cup against New Zealand.

He won a lineout and carried into a ruck, his ball presentation picture perfect. Players from both sides clambered to their feet, but he lay motionless and never moved. The initial reports suggested he had broken his neck because the medics put him in a brace before removing him on a stretcher.

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The Ireland players, unaware of the unspeakable tragedy, played out the game. Only then were they told that their team-mate had passed away, the cause of death viral cardiomyopathy. A traumatised Ireland squad withdrew from the tournament.

Just 10 days previously, on St Patrick’s Day, a healthy 18-year-old McCall led Royal School Armagh to the Ulster Schools Senior Cup title, bridging a gap of 27 years to a previous triumph, one that had another McCall at the helm, his uncle Brian, a secondrow who went on to win a Triple Crown with Ireland in 1985.

It was a second death to strike the “local” sporting community in a short space of time. Earlier that month Tyrone Gaelic football captain Cormac McAnallen (24) died in his sleep. The story carried an immediate resonance but also one that would subsequently unite the two families in grief and friendship.

[ ‘What good would anger do?’: The sudden death and lasting influence of Cormac McAnallen ]

Ian explained: “I remember when the news broke John and I were sitting with a sort of TV tea on our laps. John said: ‘I know that guy, Dad. He’s from Benburb,’ which is only four or five miles from us. I asked John how he knew him. He said that they trained in the same gym.”

Ian recalled how Carolyn joined them in watching the McAnallen news. She turned to her son and said, “John, that’s how sudden death is. A young guy, everything going for him and suddenly he’s passed away and taken from this world. John, that could be you. I hope you are ready,” the latter a casual aside about faith. John’s answer was simple: “I am, Mum.” Three weeks later that conversation would assume an aching poignancy.

The boy with the exotic flaming locks and artistic tendencies

John McCall was a flame-haired, teak-tough titan on a rugby pitch, a natural leader who brought others along, especially the diffident, by sheer force of personality. He was a student of the game fostered by conversations with his father, both backrow forwards, who enjoyed dissecting the nuances of the position and strategising match scenarios.

The teenager was a sponge when it came to rugby, soaking up its minutiae, and happy to discuss it with all comers, but although serious and unflinching on a pitch he had an impish sense of devilment off it. He was a brilliant rugby player that had stockpiled representative honours even at his tender age that included leading Ulster to an interprovincial school’s title.

Ian, a former first-team captain with City of Armagh RFC, eventually put away his rugby boots about 10 years ago, aged 57. By his own reckoning it was a sport that gave him so much, including mores and friendships that endure to this day, and a chance for the farmer’s son to test his mettle physically. Old school values and principles, any animosity cleansed with the first sup of a pint.

His son was easy to spot on a pitch with his distinctive red thatch. “Some of the boys were telling me that when the school toured South Africa the year before, in the summer of 2003, when they were training, the local young kids watched on initially and then came over to see John’s hair because it was exotic. They’d rub their hands in his hair and then look at their hands.”

John had the trace elements of a homebird, loved the comforts of his mother’s cooking, and away from rugby excelled in a less physically abrasive pursuit. Ian explained: “Apart from his rugby he had a fantastic gift with his art. He could draw, see things, and in the art department in the Royal School (Armagh) there is a stained-glass window that he had done with two toucans looking at each other; it’s very colourful.

“He had also [completed] a 10 foot high Celtic Cross, which he had moulded out of clay, fired it, and then joined it together. He had that very soft touch when it came to art.

“When he was going down to the Ireland under-19s training, Stuart Megaw, who was at school with John and on that 19s team, told me that they used to stop at a graveyard somewhere near Monasterboice because in it was a structure on which he has modelling his Celtic Cross. Stuart told me that they had to stop there so that John could draw and take dimensions.

“With regards to his career and where he was going, he had been accepted for architecture at Queen’s [University]. That was his pathway. The rest of us couldn’t draw a straight line. He had this gift. From an early age he would have been drawing cartoon characters.”

John had a sense of mischief, “no angel” in his father’s words, and as if to illustrate the fact Ian told the story of his son being gently reprimanded in Durban for buying a catapult and “stinging boys” when the squad hit the beach.

Ian explained: “Our family went from two adults and three kids to having five adults at that stage. It was a great time. Life is all seasons. We would have gone out every Friday night for our tea and the craic would have been good. A bit of banter, and it was lovely. Rebecca, 20, was in Newcastle University, while James, 16, was in the upper fifth in Royal School Armagh.”

The family celebrated the Schools Cup triumph on the Tuesday, and on the Thursday John travelled down to Dublin ahead of flying out to South Africa. Father and son never got to chew over the match as they traditionally would have done.

Ian continued: “John’s death changed things. At one stage we were going down one road and then we came to a T junction and went a different road. Like any parents we were looking ahead as to what our kids would do and what sort of path they would take without trying to direct them ourselves.

“We had this long road, and we could see things ahead, and then when John died on the March 27th that stopped. We then set out on this twisty, narrow, difficult road of life. We soon discovered that burying a child is very difficult. Even with our faith it is the one death that you don’t want, it is not right, it is not in the natural form and the way that things should run.

“Death itself has nearly been put away because we are all living forever. As my dad said, ‘death has been put into a shoebox and put on the pelmet, put up high.’ No one is dying and then suddenly it comes and knocks at your door, it’s a scrambling match and people are ill prepared for it.

“We are a family of deep faith. There’s religion but we are not religious. Our faith didn’t make our grieving any easier, it didn’t make you immune. There are lots of questions, lots of anger. You learn a lot of things. Grief to me is a badge of honour. What Carolyn and I told James and Rebecca is, ‘the greater the love, the greater the grief.’

“We had lost John, but we hadn’t lost Rebecca or James, and we had to be mindful of how they were grieving and finding it very difficult. We had to be there for them. It was also important not to put John up on a pedestal.”

Bringing John home

In the wee hours of the Sunday morning Ian’s father John, or Jack as he was known and after whom his grandson was named, a farmer and a farmer’s son, knocked on the door. “My dad was a hard man. He fell out with his father in 1939 because he enlisted in the army. My Dad found himself in France and then he got off the beach at Dunkirk, found himself in Burma for six years. He travelled a lot, saw a lot.

“In 1941, he was in a troop convoy that stayed six weeks in Durban. I said to him, ‘dad, if someone had told you in 1941 that you would have a grandson die in this city 63 years later, would you have believed it?

“Dad gave me £500 cash. He was crying. I had never seen my father, 85, cry in my life. My mum [Peggy] was still alive. He said to me, ‘Your mum and I don’t know why we are still here and John’s gone.’ It dawned on me how difficult that was for them. They would rather it was one of them.”

Ian left for Belfast at 3.30am to begin the journey to South Africa. When he arrived in Durban on the Monday morning he went straight to the police station to formally identify his son’s body. He said: “John was wheeled out to me on a trolley with a white sheet over him. I pulled the sheet back and there he was in his [playing] kit.

“I opened his eyes and I looked in. His pupils were just tiny, and I turned to my friend, Sam Wilson who had come with me and said, ‘Sam. his soul has left his body.’ That just came out. I have seen so many people over the years, close friends, and my own parents [die] and I have never really thought of it like that.”

Ian went to a barbecue hosted by a couple of senior rugby clubs, including Durban Collegians, at the back of Kings Park. The Ireland squad and management were there to greet him. Stephen Ferris recalled in his autobiography how everyone was blown away by the generosity of Ian’s words and how he prioritised their trauma.

John’s father dug deep. “I asked God that I wouldn’t make a fool of myself through this all.” He was on the phone to Carolyn every night, her primary concern when was he bringing John home? That journey began on the Friday.

The wake drew hundreds and hundreds to the family home, the funeral at the Mall Presbyterian Church in Armagh – the service was relayed to another church and two halls to accommodate those seeking to pay their respects – attracted thousands, the rugby community came from all over the world to mingle with those who made a shorter commute, drawn from disparate walks of life.

Ian McCall didn’t know what he was going to say right up to a couple of minutes before he was due to speak at the funeral service. He prayed for guidance. “I asked God to give me the words. I spoke about three things, John the rugby player, I spoke about the person, and I spoke about John’s faith. It just came to me in a flash, and it was so easy once I had that.”

Life after death

The postmortem revealed that John had died of viral cardiomyopathy. It was asymptomatic, no tiredness, no sleepiness, nothing, the heart muscle expanded and then it got to the stage where it slowed down and stopped. Ian gave permission for tissue samples of his son’s heart to be taken for future study.

The family was screened, there was nothing hereditary. They were involved with the CRY charity for nearly 20 years, which raises awareness of cardiac abnormalities and became very friendly with the McAnallens, who had set up the Cormac Trust.

“I said to [the late] Brendan McAnallen [Cormac’s father], ‘we want the world to stop because of Cormac and John but that’s not how it is, it is not the way it should be,” Ian explained. “Our aim and we hope we have done it, is to raise awareness.

“The McAnallens have been very good with their trust, placing defibrillators in schools and clubs throughout Ireland. We hope that what we did in holding screenings up here in schools has helped too. The world is now more savvy,” he said, pointing to the case of Manchester United and Denmark footballer Christian Eriksen.

“Carolyn’s family, her sister’s boy David, had a cardiac anomaly called Wolff Parkinson White. There is a node in your heart that runs the electrics. That was diagnosed, he had a repair done. The doctors suggested but for the diagnosis there might have been a different outcome. He ended up being an Irish Schools sprinter and he is playing rugby on the wing in Armagh now.”

Ian regularly travelled to meet parents who had lost a son or daughter to a cardiac incident, offering what support he could. He understood the devastation and the pain first hand and could therefore be empathetic.

He said: “My son’s death went around the world. Their son or daughter’s death went to the local paper. I felt guilty in that. Their grief was just as much as mine. Their love for their lost one was the same. Life goes on and we must move with it, but behind the scenes we are broken.

“The whole world does not stop because we have lost our son. That’s the way it is supposed to be. As my dad would have put it in a more parochial way, ‘your own trouble is your own trouble.’ For a year everyone will grieve with you and carry you along.

“In comes the second year and people move on with their lives and you have Christmas without your loved one, the summer holidays without your loved one, you have birthdays without your loved one; you have all these anniversaries, and you go through the same thing again. Thankfully we are doing that in the knowledge that we will see John again.”

Ian and Carolyn are blessed with 12 grandchildren to keep them occupied. He smiled: “My kids are great; we are very close and fortunate that Rebecca lives in Armagh and James works for me. Rebecca is a teacher, but she hasn’t taught very much with eight kids.”

Rugby remains a central tenet in Ian’s life. He prefers now to watch Ulster and Ireland from an armchair with a cup of tea. City of Armagh? Now that’s a different matter. He takes to the sidelines. He will see flashes of his son in the bodies of others, most recently Peter O’Mahony.

“John was physical, didn’t suffer fools gladly on a pitch. In some ways he reminds me of our current Irish captain and [he] reminds me of John. I look at the guys who were around John’s era and how they went on, how their careers panned out.”

The family was approached about having a cup named in John’s honour but graciously turned down the request. It wasn’t for them. One invitation they did agree to was when Carolyn presented the under-19 World Cup winners trophy to New Zealand when the tournament was held in Belfast.

The pain never goes away. Ian explained: “It was very difficult. Still is. Twenty years later we still miss John greatly, we think of him often. Truthfully, we love people to talk about John. To us it’s fantastic that even after 20 years John is remembered. Our memories of him go to 18 and they stop. He was and is much loved and much missed.”

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