A grand Celtic slam

Final curtain for rugby’s 2005 Six Nations tournament: Grand Slams, Triple Crowns, Wooden Spoons. Before England and France presumed shared control of the old competition a decade or so ago, a clean-sweep Grand Slam season by one nation was such a rarity as to be scarcely a consideration. Sure, the glistening Welsh team of the 1970s won three vivid scarlet Slams on the trot. Scotland has achieved it only twice since 1925, when star sportswriter of the Daily Telegraph (always bylined ‘Colonel Philip Trevor CBE’) inventively described the exploit as ‘the impregnable quadrilateral’. Only on one single occasion has Ireland revelled in the gorgeous grandeur of the Slam. It was in 1948 and to the day they died my uncles would come over to tell the tale with relish. ’Cos it was a Cork man wot won it.

That, too, was a Wales v Ireland grand finale — 13 March 1948 in front of 32,000 at Belfast’s splintery old Ravenhill. Wales had a showstoppers’ side — Jones the Sprint, Bleddyn the Jink, and Tanner the Pass. Ireland had medic maestro Jack Kyle, darting Presbyterian minister Ernie Strathdee inside him, and an effervescent back row of Bill McKay (another doc), Guinness rep Des O’Brien, and Cork decorator Jim McCarthy, who was to became the big business buddy of magnate Tony O’Reilly. At prop was the onliest JC — otherwise John Christopher Daly, of London Irish and formerly Cork’s ‘holy ground’ of Cobh, famed in song and story. JC was not your square, squat prop with cauliflower ’n mushroom ears. He was a handsome black-haired dander-up dasher, whose pictures resemble cricketer Keith Miller. The Irish Independent called him ‘the green tornado’. In the war in the Signals JC had built up his immense body strength by lugging heavy wireless equipment all over the mountains of Italy and Crete.