THE FORMER Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) president Bobby Deacy, who passed away at his Galway home on Monday, will be remembered as one of the key Union figures to oversee the transformation of the game into the professional era in the mid-1990s.
Deacy served as honorary treasurer of the IRFU from 1987 to 1996 and was thus importantly placed for the transition from the amateur era when the game turned professional in 1995. Even though the Union were reluctantly dragged into the professional era, they adapted and Deacy’s biggest contribution was his central part in the decision to set up the four provinces as the professional playing wing of the IRFU and to centrally contract the players.
On foot of his decade as treasurer, Deacy became only the eighth Connacht man to become president of the IRFU in 1996-97. Deacy was still central to the IRFU’s planning up to his death this week as he chaired the committee which oversaw ticketing arrangements for the new Lansdowne Road.
Deacy began his career as a rugby administrator when serving as secretary and treasurer with his beloved Galwegians, after his playing days as a flanker came to an end.
His family were steeped in Galwegians, and his uncle, Jack Deacy, was one of the founding members of the club after the breakaway from Corinthians in 1922. Deacy became secretary of the Connacht Branch from 1975 to 1981, before serving as president in 1985-6.
Aged 68, Deacy died suddenly but peacefully at his home in Woodstock, on the Moycullen Road, on Monday. He was a regular at Galwegians, Connacht, and Ireland games until last month and remained a trustee with the Connacht Branch while maintaining his involvement with the IRFU.
“He was very well-known throughout the country and was recognised everywhere as one of the most able administrators the game of rugby ever produced,” said Connacht Branch CEO Gerry Kelly this week. “Nationally, in his time as IRFU treasurer, he was recognised as a man who turned the organisation around and paved the way for Irish rugby to enter the professional era.”
A co-founder of Deacy and Concannon accountants, Eyre Square, (now Deacy and Associates), he is survived by his wife, Ann; daughter, Edith; son, Norman; daughter-in-law Lorraine, and grandchildren Robert, James, Matthew, and Natasha; brothers Norman (Galway) and John (Claremorris), sister Josephine, cousins and a wide circle of friends.
– Gerry Thornley