The Angel of the North

Dr Jack Kyle has never really understood the fuss that is made about him, even today. He is flattered but also genuinely baffled that a student publication would find an elderly former Irish rugby player of any interest. Within moments of sitting down in the Jury’s Inn at Croke Park, Kyle’s status as Ireland’s greatest player has been unwittingly established. A bearded man approaches our table tentatively, apologising politely for the interruption, ’I can’t pass a legend without saying hello’, he says. ’Jack, great to see you again, Sean Kelly.’ Both men can claim to have left an indelible mark on the game of rugby in Ireland. Kelly may have used his powers of persuasion as GAA President to open Croke Park’s turnstiles to rugby fans; yet it is Kyle who will remain forever revered. A shining jewel in Ireland’s solitary grand slam winning side of 1948: Kyle was the perfect fly-half capable of tearing an opposition back-line in pieces through his spontaneous displays of skill and pace.

Educated at Belfast Royal Academy, Kyle was introduced to the game by his headmaster. After leaving school, he went to the Queen’s University of Belfast, where he studied medicine, regularly playing for his College XV. In today’s game, an aspiring professional rugby player can still go to university. However, studying medicine remains a difficult proposition due its time constraints and workload. In Ulster a young flanker named David Pollock, who has been capped by Ireland A was recently forced to leave his studies to the pressures of combining two careers. In Kyle’s early career, rugby acted as an aid rather than a deterrent to his intense studies. ’There was only one official practise at the University a week, on Wednesday afternoon, when we had no lectures or clinics, but sport never impacted on your studies, if anything, it recreated you to go back and work, yet today, it’s very sad that you can’t do both.’

The professional game has been a mixed blessing for Ireland; increased revenue and interest is coupled with a generation of young adults desperately seeking employment after their rugby careers have finished. Kyle is emphatic that today’s aspiring young professionals and their families carefully think about their long-term futures before signing their first contract. ’If parents come up to me and tell me their son is thinking of university but has been offered a ’50,000 contract by a club, if he’s not sure, I’d say go and get a degree, I like to quote George Bernard Shaw’s ’passions of the mind’; of course you get ’passions of the body’, but it’s the ’passions of the mind’ that are key and I really feel you have to have another aspect in your life outside of sport.’

Winning his first cap for Ireland in 1947, Kyle went on to gain 46 caps in a career that spanned eleven years. His consistently excellent performances for his country earned him selection for the British Lion’s tour to New Zealand and Australia, earning him acclaim in the Southern Hemisphere. Tours were gruelling affairs that lasted six months, leaving Kyle unable to contact his parents for the whole period. Media coverage was scant, the team was accompanied by a solitary reporter from the Sunday Times who got homesick and had to leave the tour halfway through. He remembers the experience fondly. ’It was a remarkable experience for a young guy, it really was like travelling to the end of the earth, we visited schools and got to see all of the sights, there was absolutely no pressure on us at all, we had no coach, I suppose you didn’t really need a plan when you played for the Lions, it was all spontaneous.’

Always engaging, Kyle has an incredibly warm personality that has helped him make friendships throughout the world. He is widely read and he remains extremely proud that he once gave the celebrated Northern Irish poet Louis Macneice a lift home after a chance meeting at a rugby game at his club in Belfast. The fame that unavoidably came with his talents was always going to sit awkwardly on such modest shoulders. Nursing a desire to travel the world after he hung up his boots, Kyle ended up working as a surgeon in Zambia. After the adulation in Ireland, his African experience was incredibly refreshing. ’Part of the attraction of getting away was nobody had a clue who I was; I remember hearing a story about the Chief Medical Officer telling a lady about the new surgeon and his rugby prowess, how many times he played for Ireland and the Lions etc, she looked him up and down and said ’Dr Thompson, if some of us were lying on a trolley going into an operating theatre, we would be much more interested in the surgeon Mr Kyle is rather than how many times he played for Ireland!’’

After 34 years enjoyable years in Africa, Kyle decided to return home to County Down at the age of 74. He continues to lead a busy life filled with family and friends. His grand slam season of 1948 remains his proudest achievement, but like the rest of the country, he is unable to understand why it hasn’t been replicated. ’We didn’t realise at the time it was so special, we certainly didn’t think we’d be the only grand slam winners of last century, we thought plenty of other teams would do it, but we’ve been dining out on it ever since!’

Despite being in danger of missing his train home to Belfast, Kyle insists on sitting for as long as I need him. At the end of interview, he urges me to work as hard as I can in my final year studies and to not get too distracted by the various diversions that College provides. The perfect gentleman, Kyle is proud of everything he has achieved in his life, his family, medical career and sport have all complimented each other. ’It’s great to have maintained so many friendships after so long, sometimes I wonder what would our lives have been without our sport’ It enriched our lives, we were born with the ability to do certain things on a rugby field that you dreamt you could never do.’

By: Jonathan Drennan