Why bulked up Kelleher’s still growing

BYRON Terence Kelleher; reverse a couple of letters in the first name and Brian Terence Kelleher could be half-back on any football team still standing in the Cork football championship this weekend.

In other circumstances that might well have been the case; the original, however, Byron Kelleher, will instead be lining out at half-back (the Kiwi term for scrum-half) in Saturday’s World Cup quarter-final against France in Cardiff for his native New Zealand.

And make no mistake about it, though Byron would certainly qualify as Irish, native New Zealand he is, and demonstrably proud of it. His father, Kurt, is from Cork, but the son suffers absolutely no confusion of identity. “I’m from Dunedin in Otago in New Zealand, a New Zealander,” he says, emphatically, rejecting any suggestion that he might be half-Irish.