MOSS KEANE:Moss Keane, who has died aged 62, was a true icon of Irish rugby. Capped 51 times for Ireland, he was a member of the team that won the Triple Crown and Five Nations championship in 1982. He was also capped for the British and Irish Lions, playing 12 tour games including a Test match on the 1977 tour of New Zealand. A Munster stalwart throughout his playing career, he played his part in the province's famous victory over the All Blacks at Thomond Park in 1978.
On that occasion, Munster took on the All Blacks as never before. The players tackled like demons and Tony Ward gave a master class in kicking.
Years later Keane said of the All Blacks: “They were very sporting on the day. In fact, I thought we were lucky more penalties weren’t given against us.”
“He was an amazing character,” Donal Lenihan said of his former Munster and Ireland team mate this week. “His transition from a raw Gaelic footballer as a fresher in UCC to Irish international and Lion within the space of a few short years was truly remarkable.”
Ciarán Fitzgerald, who captained Ireland in 1982, said: “He was a giant in every way; he was a giant physically and a giant mentally – he was as clever as a whip, and I’d say nobody had a bigger heart.”
The late Bill McLaren once memorably introduced the Irish lock forward as follows: “Maurice Ignatius Keane. Eighteen and a half stone of prime Irish beef on the hoof. I don’t know about the opposition but he frightens the living daylights out of me.”
Born in 1948, he was one of three sons of Willie and Cissie Keane and grew up on the family farm at Currow, Co Kerry. Educated locally and at St Brendan’s College, Killarney, he later studied at the Salesian Agricultural College, Pallaskenry, Co Limerick where he was student of the year on his graduation in 1966.
He continued his studies at University College Cork, where he took a dairy science degree with first class honours. He subsequently joined the Department of Agriculture, where he spent his career. In his teens he played Gaelic football for his parish team, and later played at senior club level and for the county under-21 team. A full back, he won three Sigerson Cup medals playing with UCC.
It was at UCC in 1970 that he first played competitive rugby, turning out for the juniors as “Moss Fenton” to avoid the GAA ban on foreign games. He made a big impression and soon broke into the Munster team.
In January 1973, he lined out against the All Blacks at Musgrave Park. Munster coach Noel Murphy famously told him: “Moss, you are no longer an experiment, you are a Munster man picked to play the All Blacks . . . Just go out and cause mayhem. Disrupt their lineout. Stop them getting quick ball. Stand up for yourself and your team. Kerrymen have won more All-Irelands than anyone else – you’re afraid of no one. Kerry are the All Blacks of Ireland. That’s why we picked you.”
The game was drawn 3-3.
Now working in Dublin, he joined Lansdowne, a club with strong Munster links. He continued to play Gaelic football with the Civil Service, retiring to concentrate on rugby in 1977. In the meantime he had become a mainstay of the Irish international team. He was first capped in the match against France in Paris on January 19th, 1974 when Ireland lost 9-6. Keane was not originally selected for the Lions tour of New Zealand in 1977, but was called into the party when Geoff Wheel of Wales withdrew. Against New Zealand Universities at Christchurch, he was carried off with concussion, despite which he was picked for the first Test four days later. He was on the losing side in a game of which he remembered little.
In 1981 he was one of a group of players who refused to travel on Ireland’s tour of South Africa in opposition to apartheid.
At a time when fewer caps were awarded than is the case today, he became the third Irish player, after Willie John McBride and Fergus Slattery, to make 50 international appearances.
He scored his only Test try in a 22-15 home win over Scotland in February 1980. His final cap came four years later, when Ireland lost to Scotland. Following his retirement from rugby, he made golf his game. A devoted family man, he lived in Portarlington, Co Laois, and was a former president of the Monasterevin/Portarlington Lions Club. In 1993, he was badly injured when he suffered concussion and serious eye damage in a mugging near Heuston Station, Dublin.
But he recovered to see better days, none better than when Munster won two European Cups and Ireland achieved its first Grand Slam in 61 years. His friend Con Houlihan accurately and affectionately summed him up as “a man of few airs and many graces”.
He is survived by his wife Anne (née Dunne), daughters Sarah and Anne Marie, granddaughter Ellie and brothers Brian and Matt.
Maurice Ignatius (Moss) Keane: born July 27th, 1948; died October 5th, 2010