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.