It’s been a sad week for the Irish rugby community as it said goodbye to one of its favourite sons, Moss Keane, who has passed away at the age of 62 following a lengthy battle with cancer.
Keane held a status in Irish affections way in excess of his achievements on the pitch, considerable though they were. He may not have been the greatest lock forward ever. He didn’t play in a consistently successful national side.
But he was, in one historic sense, a groundbreaker, an inveterate crowd pleaser and he had a larger than life personality and reputation for mischief that epitomised the vision of rugby as an international game for “gentlemen of all classes” which it truly was in its amateur heyday.
His career did indeed have some significant achievements, spanning as it did 11 seasons and 51 caps for Ireland, plus another test match on the Lions’ tour of New Zealand in 1977. He was part of the Irish sides that won the old Five Nations Championship in 1974 and 1982, with the latter including a Triple Crown (then a big deal) for the first time in 33 years.
Perhaps more memorably, he was part of the legendary Munster side that defeated the All Blacks, the only Irish team ever to do so, in 1978. He is the first of that team to shuffle off this mortal coil. In fact, his record in matches between Munster and the All Blacks was a healthy played three, won one, drew one, lost one with an aggregate score comfortably in Munster’s favour.
Keane was first and last a Kerryman, from the county in the extreme south west of Ireland famed for its scenic beauty, dairy farming and prowess at Gaelic football, a code in which it holds a status comparable to that of Brazil in soccer.
He started off as a Gaelic footballer, playing for the Kerry team at under-age level and winning several Irish intervarsities championships while at college in Cork. His time there coincided with the last years of The Ban, the prohibition that the ultranationalist GAA placed on its members playing or even watching “foreign and fantastic sports” such as cricket, rugby and soccer lest they taint the cultural purity of true Irishmen.
Miscreants such as Keane whose sporting affections transcended narrow definitions had to assume different names when playing “foreign” games. He played college rugby as Maurice Fenton (allegedly the name of the family dog) and when The Ban was finally removed and he could revert to his true name.
The local paper’s report on his first match remarked, with tongue firmly in cheek, on the fine addition young Moss Keane was to the university team. Certainly much better than the lumbering, unfit Maurice Fenton whose place he had taken!
When Keane won his first cap in a torrid match against France in Paris in 1974 he was the first accomplished Gaelic footballer to represent Ireland at rugby since the demise of the ban. Hopes were high at the time that a new generation of “farmer forwards” would emerge from the GAA heartlands to rival the famed specimens from New Zealand and South Africa. That never really transpired; we had to make do with Keane who was never dropped over the next 10 years, apart from a tour to apartheid South Africa which he declined to make.
Gaelic footballers have to be mobile and athletic with good handling skills and Keane certainly brought these to bear in his rugby career.
One of the great and persistent sights, still burned into the memory of those of us who were there throughout the 1970s, was of this huge man all knees, nose and elbows tucking the ball under his arm and haring into the opposition at full tilt. Nothing moved the Lansdowne Road crowd to greater fervour.
Keane had a reputation for merrymaking and mischief, as well as for some memorable malapropisms that fit very well with the stereotype of the Kerryman as someone impervious to logic, contemptuous of tact and with a tendency to the irresponsible.
One story from the famous Munster-All Blacks match concerned a lineout during which a complicated Munster code, diligently worked out to foil any cryptologists in the All Blacks side, was rendered moot when Keane after concentrating hard to descramble it then groaned “Ah for feck’s sake, lads. Not me again!”
Tales of his fondness of celebration and prowess with a pint glass are legion, but almost as frequently expressed was the observation that he was essentially a gentle, softly spoken and non confrontational soul.
His popularity extended beyond these shores. One of his great friends was former England and Lions captain Bill Beaumont with whom he roomed on the Lions tour.
Some years ago, as a guest on a radio show anticipating another Ireland England showdown at Lansdowne Road, Beuamont was asked whether he would be meeting up with Moss Keane while in Dublin.
“Yes, I would hope to bump into Maurice Ignacious at some stage,” he replied.
“Ooh,” shivered the interviewer. “That’s going to be a hell of a bump!”
As we say in Ireland. Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís. (We will not see his likes again.)
RIP big fella.
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