I’d have to think but maybe the finest half back combination in Leinster ever.
It’s amazing how small schools can just have a cluster of talent. Fergus Slattery and Tom Grace for example were both classmates in Presentation College, Glasthule before both moving on elsewhere.
Ian Burns passed away, far too young.
Ian Burns, who has died aged 58, was a schoolboy sports star who went on to achieve at club, provincial and international level, in rugby and in cricket, and to have a notable career in business.
As a pupil at The High School, Burns developed an outstanding on-field rugby partnership with scrum-half John Robbie which reached its zenith when the school won the Leinster Schools Senior Cup in 1973, the first and only time in the school’s history.
“Ian was an outstanding sportsman,” recalled team captain Don Lewis this week following Burns’s sudden death while playing golf in Connemara. “He and Johnnie Robbie – they were the stars, the rest of us were just the chorus.”
According to Lewis, the season’s semi-final against a star-studded St Mary’s was in many respects the match that clinched the season for The High School. “The Mary’s team on the day included Tony Ward at No 10, a future Irish international, Rodney O’Donnell at fullback and Declan Fanning at No 8, a future captain of Leinster. But Burns gave a master class in tactical kicking in a match we only won by a point, 10-9.”
Conversion During the final against Belvedere, the Burns-Robbie partnership was again to the fore, with fly-half Burns running in two tries and two drop goals to win 19-7. Robbie kicked a conversion and two penalties.
While Robbie secured nine caps for Ireland and a tour with the Lions in South Africa (where he later settled), Burns earned just one cap for his country – as a replacement during Ireland’s 24-9 drubbing by England at Twickenham in 1980.
At club and provincial level, however, he shone, playing for Leinster in numerous inter-provincial matches in the 1970s and 1980s and for Wanderers where he was captain and later president. He also coached the international sevens team.
While better known for his rugby career, Burns was arguably a more accomplished cricketer.
He played 26 senior seasons with the YMCA, scoring an impressive 5,486 runs, during which he hit three centuries and 27 fifties. In 287 matches, he also took five wickets in an innings on 14 occasions. In no small measure due to Burns’s contribution, the Sandymount club, which he captained in 1987, 1990 and 1994, carried off the Leinster Senior Cup seven times during his tenure and won the League three times.
Personality trait A key personality trait, according to Lewis, was Burns’s combination of determination and confidence. “He was a little bit cheeky; there was a glint in his eye that he could do it. He had that self-belief.”
The same qualities were evident in his business life.
After High School, Burns went to work for Billy Gorman, to whom he became close and whom considered a soul mate. He spent 26 years with Gorman AGN financial consultants, overseeing its merger in 2004 with RMS Robson Rhodes. Burns excelled in IT, marketing and long-term strategic planning – qualities that got him noticed by other companies.
In 2004, he joined Merlyn Showering of Kilkenny. In 2007 joined the board of Mothercare Ireland, to which he had been an adviser since 1992.
This week, Michael Hoyne of Merlyn praised Burns’s foresight. “He was the one that could stand back from the business and evaluate a situation,” said Hoyne. “He was always thinking ‘what should the business be like in three years time?’ ”
In 2008, his career took a turn when he launched Airone, which aimed to be a low-cost airline in the Caribbean with investors who included Digicel vice-president Leslie Buckley, former rugby international Brendan Mullin of Quantum Investment Capital and NCB, and former director of operations at Guinness Peat Aviation Peter Delaney. But the project foundered when the Jamaican government refused a licence. Investors were reimbursed.
Decamped Burns decamped his idea to Barbados where in May 2011 with his son Robbie, he began operating REDjet, a low-cost carrier. The airline was a hit with passengers but supporters complained of strangling official bureaucracy and eventually financial difficulties arose. In June 2012 the airline closed.
“The man came to Barbados. He tried to set up a regional airline,” said Barbadan investor Ralph Williams. “He was frustrated non-stop by technocrats, here and in the other islands,” added Williams, who said he lost millions in the venture.
Burns was raised with a strong religious faith, a fact that was evident at his funeral this week in a packed Zion Road, Rathgar, Church of Ireland church. Both his rector, the Rev Arthur Young of Kill O’the Grange, and Bishop Ferran Glenfield, a family friend, noted that Burns lived his faith in Christ.
Ian Burns married Jackie Burgess. They had three children, Robbie, Peter and Nicki. They survive him as does his mother, Ruth, and brother John.
Cricket and rugby aren’t sports, Jeff.
Jesus christ, but they wasted an awful lot of ink on that no mark.
Proddie privilege still alive and well.
Robbie settled himself in south Africa when apartheid was still in full swing iirc.
That would be par for the course for that crowd.
There’s a surprising number of “Doubles” by the Religous Orders
The Holy Ghost Order has achieved the Leinster-Munster double on over a dozen occasions between Blackrock/Rockwell. The last double was the first time St Michaels/Rockwell have both won in the same year (2012). St Mary’s/Rockwell have both won just the one time as well, in 1961.
The Jes schools have dont it numerous times between Leinster/Connacht with combinations of Belvedere & Clongowes with the Jes. Clongowes have never won the same year as Crescent but Belvo did as mentioned in 1951 to give a Leinster/Munster Double.
1932 was a proud year for the Presentation Brothers. Their boys from PBC Cork and PBC Bray were the top dogs in Munster/Leinster and to do it the same year as the Eucharistic Conference and Fianna Fáil’s ascent to power must really have made them proud.
There is a fantastic photo of the Brother Superior of the Christian Brothers with the Leinster and Munster trophies in 1976 when CBC Monkstown/CBC Cork won it. He is beaming with pride. It’s probably the apex of Christian Brothers rule in Ireland. They controlled the education of the working class boys of the inner cities, they controlled the Gaelic education of Irish boys all over the country and now they ruled the middle class arena for a brief moment. A short time later The Mon old boy Jack Lynch was back in office and all was right with the world.
I could be wrong but I think the only possibility of a proper Leinster/Ulster double (which would assuradly be the most prestigous of doubles given those two competitions preeminence over the others) would be from Wesley College/Methodist College, Belfast. They narrowly missed out on this in 1899/1899 with both winning just a year either side of the other. I must be missing out on an Ulster Presbyterian school to match St Andrews College Booterstown though.
Great tribute.
Kevin Kelleher: Respected referee who championed schools rugby
Obituary: Headmaster of St Conleth’s sent off All Blacks legend in controversial incident
Irish Times, Saturday 19 November 2016
Kevin Kelleher, who has died aged 95, was a highly respected rugby referee who presided over 23 international matches between 1960 and 1972. He famously sent off New Zealand’s Colin Meads during a game between Scotland and the All Blacks at Murrayfield in 1967.
In his pomp, Meads was the All Black’s greatest star and Kelleher’s decision prompted outrage among fans which persisted for many years. Kelleher was also a dedicated headmaster of a Dublin school and participated in running it until his final illness.
Looking back on his long career with Seán Diffley of the Irish Independent in 2001, Kelleher denied being a tough referee. “The irony is that in 27 years with the whistle, I only sent off two players, Meads for that careless kick at the Scottish scrumhalf and a player in a Leinster Cup match who ran across the width of the pitch to punch somebody and left me with little alternative.”
He said he favoured the “silent whistle” approach, allowing the game to flow with as few stoppages as possible.
In later life, Kelleher and Meads became firm friends, visiting each other’s homes in New Zealand and Ireland, and this year Kelleher was sorry to hear that Meads had not been well. Kelleher gave Meads the whistle he had used when sending him off and it is now in a rugby museum in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Nonetheless, Kelleher took a firm line on dangerous play. Although he was not involved in the game in which Munster forward Peter Clohessy stamped on a French player when playing for Ireland against France in Paris in 1996, he told The Irish Times that the player should have been banned for life, rather than the six-month suspension imposed on him.
“I watched the incident several times over on television and, quite frankly, I was absolutely appalled,” he said. “It was horrific. He could have killed him. On the basis of his previous record, I would put him out of the game for keeps.”
Clohessy insisted that the TV footage was misleading.
Kelleher’s tall lean figure was a familiar feature on the pitch to generations of boys who played in the Leinster schools junior and senior cup competitions from the 1950s on. Those games and their young players held the future of Irish rugby and they deserved to be refereed properly.
Stephen Hilditch, president of the Irish Rugby Football Union, pinpointed this contribution when he said, “Kevin Kelleher’s contribution to Leinster and to schools’ rugby in particular was truly exceptional”, on learning of his death.
Kelleher remained involved in rugby after retiring as a referee, becoming president of the Leinster Branch in 1977 while also serving as honorary secretary of the Leinster Schools Committee for 52 years.
Rugby was an amateur sport in those days and Kelleher had become headmaster of St Conleth’s private school in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, where his private and professional life overlapped.
His predecessor, an enterprising teacher – he also had a grocery shop – Bernard Sheppard founded the school “for the sons of Catholic gentlemen” at 19 Clyde Road in 1939. In 1957, Sheppard died and his wife Patricia (nee King), an American from Seattle, subsequently married Kelleher who had been teaching at the school since 1944.
Kelleher became headmaster in 1960, a title he retained until his death. His dedication to keeping a small private school going was remarkable. Unusually he lived on the premises, opening the doors in the morning and locking up at night, and overseeing the finances. Though he did not teach in latter years, running the school “tuck shop” enabled him to keep in touch with pupils until the very end of his life.
Sheppard’s daughter Ann (Kelleher’s step-daughter) was principal teacher between 1988 and 2001 and is currently school chief executive. Past pupils included Christopher and Michael Heaney, sons of poet Seamus Heaney, while journalist Mary Raftery was one of the first girls to be admitted.
A Breton nationalist and former member of the Waffen SS, Louis Feutren, taught French at the school from the 1950s until 1985.
As a child Kelleher had lived in the Dublin suburb of Drumcondra. His father David was a civil servant and had played with the Dublin team which won the All-Ireland football championship in 1906, and the two following years.
Kevin and his brother Dermot played hurling and rugby at O’Connell’s School. He graduated from University College Dublin, and continued playing rugby at Lansdowne RFC. Before joining St Conleth’s to teach English and Latin, he taught at another smaller school.
Kevin Kelleher is survived by his sister Nora and his step-daughter Ann. His wife Patricia died in 2007.
RIP. Lorcan Balfe and himself were/are great servants to Leinster Schools Rugby from the smaller traditional rugby schools.
Conleths is hardly a rugby school.
They play rugby and have for as long as I can remember due to KK, but they are simply small.
Only when the fencing season is over.
“Rugby is of course our main sport, and we have a proud tradition of competitiveness in the Leinster Shield and Cup competitions”
http://stconleths.ie/ss-over/ss-co-curriculum/
Eir Sports coverage of the big one starts tomorrow. Clongowes take on St Fintan’s. Can any of our Fingal correspondents shed some light on the Northside minnows?
Always gives me a good giggle reading back over old quotes,
What’s so amusing about it, mate? Bog standard irony. “I can’t believe there’s no thread yet.” “It simply doesn’t get much better than that.” Etc etc.
Indeed, mate.
Your “gotcha” thread bump would have some merit if I wasn’t a die hard St Michael’s fan.
Fintans will be hosed and sent back to Sutton with their tea in a mug.
