I hope his wit and cutting edge analysis isnât defanged
Heâll slap some female pundit/journalist on the arse presently and thatâll be the end of him for another year
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Stephen Jones, the doyen of rugby scribes and Franno in the same publication. Doesnât get much better than that.
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I assume he will never share office space with any journalist mediocrity
Franno is a finance high flier - rugby writing is a mere sideline
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Whoever took that third photo had a bad case of the shakes
Itâs a strange piece
Can you paste it up? Or is it worth it?
Iâm only getting the first paragraph for some reason. A paste would be greatly appreciated @KinvarasPassion
Times app seems to have a paste per paragraph restriction. @Raylan can you try?
âVery few of us are what we seem,â Agatha Christie wrote.
At about 4.30pm on October 28, 2021, David Tweed, who had been my second-row partner in a 1995 World Cup match against Japan in Bloemfontein, was travelling on a high-powered motorbike on the B147, a stretch of road on the Antrim coast. It was a crystal-clear day, the weather conditions were beautiful and it was nearly two hours from sunset. Apparently at a junction on Whitepark Road, Tweed lost control of the bike and was flung from it. Such was the force of the impact that he broke his neck and was killed instantly. If WhatsApp is any indicator, nobody really cared. It barely registered with me. Not even a flicker of regret.
We read often on our news feeds about single-vehicle accidents, usually at night. Apart from the drivers, the only other casualty is an unfortunate tree or wall that has been hit at high speed. These incidents go down as road traffic accidents, but we all know that a significant proportion of them are suicides. It is pointless to argue otherwise.
I have travelled along the B147 many times. The road is slow, twisty and undulating, and people tend to stick to the speed limit. Just exactly where did Tweed have to be in such a hurry? I contend that he was not going anywhere in particular, and that the sole purpose of his road trip was to end his own life.
Tweed had been at liberty since 2016, after an eight-year sentence for sexual assault was quashed by the Court of Appeal. Why, if he did kill himself, would he have chosen to do it then? All I can do is ask the questions.
In 1992, on the way to winning the Leinster Senior Cup, Blackrock College had to overcome the challenge of Skerries in the quarter-final in a match in Donnybrook. It was a beautiful spring day â both teams could throw the ball about â what could go wrong?
Twenty minutes into the game I had been kicked and punched as many times as I had been in the whole season. Was it the opposition pack as a whole or was it just one guy? I had to ask the question at the next huddle. No one could see anything.
About five minutes before half-time, I carried the ball, got tackled and placed it as a ruck developed over me. Seconds later I got stamped on the back of my head, ears and shoulders. About a dozen frenzied kicks. The assault drew blood and it hurt and, because my arms were pinned down, I couldnât protect myself. I did however manage to loose an arm, catch my assailant and hold on to his sock until the ruck cleared so I could find out who it was.
The stamping turned to punches as he tried to get me to release my grip before I could recognise him. I looked up just as another blow came in and saw that it was my opposite number: Christy Jenkinson. The play went on and he moved to follow it, except he never made it. I dropped him, and he collapsed to the floor.
I was not a dirty player, and neither did I ever go looking for unnecessary aggravation, but this was a good deal more than playing a game of football. I dropped a knee into his chest, grabbed the scruff of his collar and smacked him in the face as hard as I could. He started crying and roaring in pain. I held my fist over his head and inquired whether he wanted some more. I had never done something like that anywhere before.
There wasnât a peep out of him for most of the rest of the match and Blackrock cruised to a 30-point win. Who cares about a scoreline after an afternoon like that? About two minutes from time there was another dangerous attempt to take my head off, which missed.
The final whistle blew, and Jenkinson came straight over to me and tried to shake my hand. There is a myth in rugby, that has been perpetuated, that players knock the living daylights out of each other and then they shake hands and go into the clubhouse to drink beer together until they fall over. After Jenkinsonâs performance there was no way I would shake his hand and I told him where to go.
Seconds later there was nearly an all-in as my refusal was seen as a great slight. He followed me around the pitch calling me names and then getting aggressive and offering the handshake again. I laughed at him. I had never seen such anger, whether it was mock or real. Either way there would be no handshake.
Entreaties were made to one of our players to make me see sense and just offer the paw. You canât shake hands if you donât mean it, and I refused. A while later, in the Old Wesley clubhouse, Jenkinson approached once more and proffered his hand, which I promptly refused again to shake. There was another altercation and people had to be pulled away again. He roared at me that he would see me behind the stands, and I calmly told him that I would be delighted to sort him out again.
Like all cowards, for him the prospect of meeting someone bigger and stronger face to face, where he could not hit from behind, did not appeal. His anger subsided when I made it very clear that I would indeed wait for him at the back of the stands. He stormed off. That was the last time I saw Christy Jenkinson.
Everyone except me thought it was funny. I could not get over his anger and the fact that every punch and kick was as cowardly an act as I had experienced on a rugby field.
Twenty-two years later, Jenkinson hanged himself in his own garage. At that stage there had been statements from 16 boys who had been raped by him. All told, it was estimated that he had raped dozens of boys, sometimes in extraordinarily violent ways. He bullied all his victims emotionally and mentally for years and months after the assaults. On many occasions he went back to rape the boys again.
The damage he inflicted on the local community was incalculable, and for many it is still an open festering wound. A lot of the victims were underage rugby players in Skerries, all of whom had been entrusted in his care.
Quite how he got away with it for so long is troubling. There were rumours and stories circulating for a long time before he took the cowardâs route out. Once again the exit was predicated not on a scintilla of remorse for any of his victims, but on the notion that the inconvenience of a long prison stretch would be too much to bear.
A season later I was playing for Leinster against Ulster in Ravenhill. A long sequence of losses had just begun to be reversed and we fancied a win against the northern province. My immediate opponent that day was David Tweed, a big unit but not by any means a good player. He was not particularly good at any facet of the game, but every now and again a team will make space for a hatchet man, and that is what Tweed was there for. He was an aggressor. Leinster dogged out a win in the end, but the interpro was a reprise of the match against Skerries. I never knew when or where until my back was turned, and then the punch or stamp would come.
I was quite surprised that, when I eventually squared up to him, he put his dukes up in a defensive mode. He liked handing it out, but did not like getting hit. Two good punches and he was on his seat, and then I laughed at him.
âIs that it?â I said. He got up and followed play, but for weeks after I could not get over it. Who kicks a player on the ground and, when the player gets up to face the assailant, puts up his dukes? The classic bully. Not a peep out of him for the rest of the match. No hand-shaking drama this time, because we did not meet after the whistle.
A season or two later, Tweed started turning up for Ireland squad sessions. I shared a room with him for one night, in the Berkeley Court hotel in Dublin. It was the first time I saw the UVF tattoo. Despite media reports, the ink was on his lower leg and not his backside.
Quite often managers are aware that players donât like each other, or sense that they need to gel because they may end up playing in a partnership on the team. Either way, it was an uncomfortable room-share. I just did not like the guy â I am sure the feeling was mutual.
In January 1995, England played Ireland in Dublin and sometime in the second half I broke my ribs. My replacement was a big surprise. I had lost out on a lot of caps through the years from injury, but Tweedâs selection stuck in my craw. He was not international class and there were one or two players on the panel who will have been aggrieved not to have got the call ahead of him. The team lost to France and Scotland but, crucially, won in Cardiff â so that side was picked to play against Italy.
I was told that I would have to play against Wales A to prove my fitness, or I would not go to South Africa for the World Cup. The match against Italy in Treviso that May was the most bizarre test match I have been involved in, even though I was not in the match-day 21.
Ireland were well beaten, and the stench of discontent that bordered on mutiny prompted me to go to bed early that night. Some chose alcohol to temporarily solve their issues. When I went down for breakfast, there were the night manager, the hotel manager, two carabinieri and some shocked IRFU management. I tried to make my way into the bar/breakfast room, only to learn that a bomb had hit it. The waitress told me to go to the restaurant for breakfast.
As I went across the foyer the night manager shouted out: âIl grosso, il grosso.â Yes, I was grosso, but I was the wrong grosso.
Tweed had gone out drinking, and arrived back steaming. The residentsâ bar was closed but he broke the door, smashed open the bar and stole a couple of bottles of rum, which he drank until early morning. The bar was thrashed when everyone got up. There was thousands of eurosâ worth of damage. There would be hell to pay.
Everyone knew who did it, but nobody would say anything. We all had to stump up. Tweed just sat there. That curious term âomertaâ makes its first appearance in this piece.
The squad flew to South Africa, and I and Gabriel Fulcher were picked in the second row to play the All Blacks in Johannesburg. Later in the week we flew to Bloemfontein to play Japan, and the team was announced. Tweed and I would form the second row for that match.
In ten years at international level, I had always roomed with the person I was picked to room with. Now, for the first time in my career, I asked not to room with a player. Better for team harmony if Tweed roomed with someone who would put up with him.
For the record, he did not sing or hum God save the Queen at anthem time, and neither did he wear an Ulster jersey under his Ireland jersey. We beat Japan easily enough, and that was the end of Tweedâs international career. When the World Cup was finished in Durban, at the hands of the French, I stayed on for two weeks and the team headed home. That was the last time I saw him.
I am not trying to suggest that I was a John Wayne tough guy here. These men brought uncommon violence and fear wherever they went. I was in a position after severe provocation to confront and subdue them. It is the nature of things that their victims were not. Tweedâs own daughters and Jenkinsonâs vulnerable teenage victims had very few options.
How did these two Jimmy Saviles manage to hide in plain sight for so long? How many more are there out there?
When you compare and contrast Tweed and Jenkinson, it is remarkable how similar their methods were. Upstanding members of the community both, yet beneath the façade . . . If both sets of victims sat in the same room and talked to each other you could be guaranteed a common theme that would run through their ordeals, and at the end of it all would be that gnawing sense that both men evaded justice. This is where we have to ask questions and examine Tweedâs accident.
In January 2019, Michael âKitâ Carson, a football coach of some standing who was due before the courts charged with the sexual assaults of 11 boys over a 30-year period, died in a single vehicle âaccidentâ in Cambridgeshire, on the morning his trial was due to start. At an inquest nine months later, the police were certain what had happened. Carsonâs Mazda hit a tree at high speed. There was âno evidence of braking or sharp steeringâ, and the police concluded that he had committed suicide. A logical conclusion, given that Carson was facing jail for the rest of his life.
When, I wonder, will be the inquest into Tweedâs accident? Surely the chapter is not closed just because the perpetrator of these crimes is dead. Surely?
The identities of the children Tweed had abused were not clear when he faced charges in January 2009. They may or may not have been his daughters, but the PSNI and the Crown Prosecution Service were certain of their case. Tweed, incredibly, beat the charges in May that year. The case was strong enough, but . . .
In 2012, he was charged with abusing two different girls, and the evidence was overwhelming. He got eight years in Maghaberry prison. Although most people could scarcely believe the scale of his depravity, Tweed blew kisses to the gallery as he was sent down. Who was this monster in our midst?
In October 2016, Tweedâs conviction was quashed on the basis of the minutest legal technicality. How does that happen? How does a man who is a danger to his family and children in the neighbourhood walk scot-free? Did the victims get a right of appeal?
Tweed apparently bought a house in the Ballymena district, close to his estranged family. How do you buy a house after you have spent four years in jail? Which lender would have let that credit application through?
When his death was announced, how could the politicians who eulogised him not have known about his conviction and jail time, and why he was in jail? Surely no elected representative who knew him would ever have said anything remotely positive about the sort of a man he was. What exactly did Tweed get up to in the five years from his release to his death?
If he did kill himself, why did he do it then? Was there something coming down the road â more charges? Would the PSNI care to make a statement, for the avoidance of doubt?
I listened to Nicola Tallantâs Crime World podcast with Tweedâs daughters. It was as grim an hour as I have had to listen to. The man is dead, but they still cannot rest easy. Something is still unfinished about this case. Is there any chance that someone could take up the file and re- examine the wider angle? Any chance that someone other than the family could volunteer a statement? Omerta.
We all knew, running around the rugby fields, that he was a wrong âun. We just didnât know how wrong
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Good man. I got it copied through Brave.
He raises important points here but Iâd say him sorting the two bullies out on the field has a bang off that TNH off it.
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How do you paste from the times mate? My phone wonât do it. I thought they had found a way of preventing it.
Franno has the spinnaker up. Thatâs actually a horrifying article now Iâve read it. As deeply sinister as anything. Actually quite a brave, and very powerful article.
I thought it was just going to be an after the fact albeit highly appropriate description of that thug tweed. I was wondering where all the condemnation was whilst he was still a freed predatory paedophile stalking the corridors of power.
Iâd say thereâs better ways of doing it - link the article into chrome and paste it piecemeal.
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I opened in the Brave browser and it allowed me to copy it all in one chunk.
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I think its a great article. Lays it out very clearly. Horrendous.
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The 1992 anecdote ruins it ⌠rubby has always been a game of violence ⌠I doubt those two lads were the only two lads to give Francis a shoeing âŚscrums and rucks has always had lads administering cheap shots
The 1995 Ireland World Cup squad contained Davy Tweed, Eddie Halvey and Brendan Mullin.
Anthony Foley and Gary Halpin are no longer with us.
Thereâs quite the book in the story of the individuals of that squad. âThe Last Amateursâ or some such.
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