OBITUARY:MANY REPRESENTATIVES from Munster rugby and Irish cricket were among a huge attendance yesterday in St Michael's Church, Blackrock, Cork at the funeral of Jim Kiernan (80), who passed away last week after a short illness.

In a distinguished playing career, Kiernan won a Munster Schools’ Senior Cup medal with Presentation Brothers College in 1948, Munster Senior Cup medals with University College Cork in 1955 and Cork Constitution in 1957 (as captain), and a Cork Charity Cup medal in 1961 with Dolphin, where he also served as president, as well as playing on numerous occasions at fullback for Munster.

The popular and eminently personable Kiernan was a Munster selector between 1971 and 1973 and also between 1981 and 1987, and served as Irish selector between 1984 and 1987. He was elected president of Dolphin for the 1978/79 season.

He may well have been a dual international but for his legendary brother Tom, the one-time Irish and Lions’ fullback, though compensation came by way of being able to watch his son, Michael, play 43 times for Ireland, including the Triple Crown wins of 1982 and ’85, as well as touring New Zealand with the Lions.

A reliable opening batsman and a useful off spinner with the Bohemians and Cork County cricket clubs, as the Cricket Ireland website put it Kiernan would surely have added to his solitary Irish cap, “had he appeared regularly in areas more open to selectorial visibility than The Mardyke”.

His brother Tom was also a useful batsman, and made a century for Cork County after stepping off a plane from his successful captaincy of the Lions tour of South Africa in 1968.

Jim Kiernan is survived by his wife Angela, his children Eileen, Catherine, Michael, Peter, Valerie and Jennifer, his sisters Anne and Eileen and his brother Tom.

He was predeceased by another sister, Mary.

– GT