The time of a true prince of the pigskin has ended

UNCLE Moss is dead.

Moss Keane may not have been a relation but the Currow man was a kindred spirit of the Keane clan of Listowel.

He was one of ours, and we were his as far as all of us were concerned. There may not have been blood ties but the bonds were strong.

After all, we all loved Gaelic football, rugby, porter, yarn telling and comradery, if not always in that order. Moss was first and foremost a Kerry man and we stood shoulder to shoulder on that one.

As a student living in Dublin, just yards from Lansdowne’s famous clubhouse I often popped in after club games for a few pints. There the Kerry duo in residence, full-back Dick Spring and second row Moss Keane, always provided a fellow county man with a great welcome.

It was easier to fall in with the D4 lads’ assumption that the two Kerry Keanes were related, and so, I followed the natural conceit and agreed with them that Moss was surely an uncle. It gave me a well-earned rest from being John B Keane’s son. But just how they figured the 6ft 5in giant was related to a five-foot-feck-all student remains a mystery.

For Kerry people Moss Keane was special. He was a mighty bridge between Gaelic football and rugby. The first true rugby find of the era after the GAA revoked the infamous Rule 27 and removed the “ban” on its members playing so-called “foreign games”.

Moss brought ordinary GAA people into the world of rugby; here was one of their own playing with the likes of Willie John McBride against England and all were proud when he gave as good as he got with the best of ’em. He was a class act who demolished class barriers in Irish sport.

There is a breed of Kerry people who love rugby, they dwell mostly in the hills and plains of North Kerry. Moss gave great heart and hope to those who love the oval ball. He became one of the famous Currow Lions and played for his country 51 times.

He was a legend from game one for Ireland. On his debut against France in 1974 he cleared a ball from the 22 – as it was then – with a right-footed kick from the hand which left the rugby world bemused – a second row that could actually kick a ball.

His mighty runs with the ball under his oxter inspired the Lansdowne Road crowd to roar the name of Moss Keane in unison ahead of all others, and long before the Keano chat was invented for his namesake of another era and game.

On that famous October day in 1978 when Munster beat the All-Blacks Moss and his teammates entered the folklore of Irish rugby. If this was all he achieved in a glorious career he would be remembered forever, but he did far more, including winning a Triple Crown and a Five Nations.

Off the pitch Moss was a gentle giant, with a great intellect and a master of the witty and apt original remark which he conjured up with ease.

There is at least one raw recruit of a student who will never forget him for extending the warm arm of friendship, when he lifted me in a virtual gabháil from the outer fringes of a session of a wet Sunday afternoon in Lansdowne clubhouse into its very heart. In one fell swoop he had gifted me his comrades and made a lonely boy feel at home in Dublin when he really wanted to be at home in Kerry. He never lost the run of himself and knew how to walk easy when his jug was full.

The time of a true prince of the pigskin has come to an end.