In my life there have not been too many of those wonderful moments of achievement when pleasure and pride unite to give you that physical and mental lift personified when Olympic victors punch the air with joy. The first came when, in the context of the St. Andrew’s Under-14s Seven-a-Side Rugby League, I captained the winning team. The school scholarship award had not been so sweet because it was at the second attempt.

To understand the importance of the Under-14s rugby win you must have a feel for what the game meant in the school. It was a time when rugby galvanised the whole school in the winter season. Every boy was expected to train twice a week, whatever the weather, and there was a particular atmosphere attached to the school’s sports facilities on the Stillorgan Road, about a mile from the school. On a splendid and slightly sloping site, there were two rugby pitches, a cricket square, a 25 meter outdoor swimming pool built by the boys, and a classic white-painted corrugated iron pavilion with a front veranda.

Bicycles were left against the railings fronting the pitches. Inside the pavilion veranda was a spacious changing room. Beyond that were the two changing rooms for competing teams and the shower and toilet area. The pavilion’s holy of holies was only accessible from the side. That was the groundsman’s shed with its distinctive smells from housing the big lawnmower, the line-marker, and other gadgets and sports equipment.

Masters and visiting referees or umpires changed there because the shed was always delightfully warmed by the boiler for the pavilion’s showers. Few Dublin schools enjoyed such spacious and comprehensive sports facilities. The site is now part of the Stillorgan Road “Montrose” complex, which is the headquarters of Ireland’s national radio and television service, RTÉ.

In addition to the prestige and atmosphere of the pavilion and pitches, although one should perhaps mention the dirt and splinters of the floors torn by thousands of boot studs, St. Andrew’s at that time still had the reputation of a school that might sometimes win matches or produce great players. Ronnie Dawson, who was later to captain Ireland and a British Lions tour, was already recognised as a player of potential on the school’s top team, the first fifteen. This meant that enthusiastic 12 and 13-year-olds knew the Under-14s league form matches and day boy versus boarder games as real opportunities to “show their stuff” with an eye to selection for a team that would play against other schools or in provincial cup competitions. In any case, there is always a degree of satisfaction if you are on the winning team in any game.

My situation in 1952 was that I had already been through an Under-14s league season. I had often been frightened and bruised but I had learnt a lot about how to mind myself and to mete out undetected blows on others. Once I had dramatically winded another boy with an elbow to the ribs.

Now I had a chance to shape younger boys into my own team. I and the four other team captains had to select in turn from the pool of available players and, thanks to the luck of the draw, I was able to get a reasonable balance of weight, speed and wit in my selection of six. In making my choices I was also inspired to try as a place-kicker an unlikely classmate I had noticed practicing his kicking with great devotion.

On the seven-a-side I played at scrum half where I could watch everything that was going on, shouting at my three forwards and hoping my strategic signals to my backs would not be understood by the other side. The qualities which brought success in the league were in due course to make me captain of the school’s Junior Cup team and get me a place on the first fifteen. They also brought me fleeting fame three years later for saving a boarders’ team from defeat by the day boys.

Older than most of my team, and a form ahead of them, I had already played an Under-14s league season so knew how a seven-a-side game must be paced. Although I was neither big nor a runner, I had become a fearless tackler because I understood the mechanics of the textbook tackle and knew if you got it right you could fell anyone. I had a canny sense of position and my fundamental lack of speed was offset by the pace of my initial drive over five or ten yards. In time I developed a long pass, but was always disappointed that my kicking, other than a punt off the left foot, was substandard. Happily enough, particularly in the seven-a-side league format, it was often this poor kick, occasionally transforming itself into a brilliant kick-ahead – looping the heads of the opposing defence – which enabled my backs to score winning tries.

The exciting prospect of having a chance to be the overall winner – as each team played the others – built up week by week. Older boys began to take an interest and appeared to cheer on their friends. I knew from the previous year that each member of a winning team got a silver medal and that the captain would hold the biggest silver cup I had ever seen and have his name and the year inscribed on a small silver shield to be tacked to the black wooden plinth on which the cup stood.

When it got to the deciding game the tension was incredible and I dared not think my team might pull off a victory. I knew how unreliable some of the team were. Yet they held together and I was able to clinch victory from a little kick-ahead in front of the opposing goal line – which I was able to catch – just making it to the line with the ball to my chest as one of the bigger boys on the other side felled me from behind.

When scoring a winning try, it is a truly primal feeling to have the smell and taste of grass and soil crushing into your face.

Although the photograph of me with the league cup is of a blazered boy in short trousers standing alone in the school yard, you have to read it as a waving of the Irish School’s Senior Rugby Cup by the winning captain as his team mounts the stand at Lansdowne Road to rapturous acclamation.

The other two great moments of my rugby career brought battle scars as well as the inevitable direct contact with man and ball, grass and mud. First, I stood my ground as the last line of the boarders’ defence in front of the posts as the school’s biggest day boy charged towards what he must have seen as a winning try. I took him down with a classic tackle, driving my shoulder into the top of the forward’s thigh and holding on to drop him at the knees. The price of the tackle was a winding and a day’s observation for concussion but it was more than compensated for by the plaudits of the housemasters.

As soon as I picked myself up from the second most memorable tackle of my schooldays, another classic on a flying winger, that left me with the satisfaction of prostrating the runner at full stretch on the turf as I was dragged to a standstill with my arms locked around the threatening back’s ankles, the disarmed boots pressing against my cheekbone, I regretted my heroic effort. One of the wing’s boot studs had ripped my top lip and I could feel a bruise swelling up like a hard boiled sweet sucked between upper lip and front teeth. The horror of that afternoon was that my first formal dress dance at a Southside girls’ boarding school was scheduled for the same evening. I would have preferred to let the wing score and have my face intact.

Breaking a wrist in a fall at the age of seventeen inhibited me from trying to play rugby at university. My final season was in my first year of employment in the north of England where my experience protected me when playing for Blyth Rugby Club against local teams of coal miners and shipyard workers. The fear of marauding forwards, which prompted me to quit the rugby field for good, came when the inexperienced Blyth team travelled to Newcastle and North Shields to play the fourth or fifth teams of well-established and renowned clubs like Gosforth and Percy Park. Rugby at that level is perhaps the toughest of all as you confront both young tigers trying to make a big impression and hardened veterans-in-decline determined to demonstrate the tricks they have learnt over the years.

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