Holding out for a hero

It’s not given to many men to meet their lifelong hero and inspiration. On the eve of the Rugby World Cup Final, the Irish Examiner’s Donal Lenihan tells the story for the first time of a journey which took him from the Christian Brothers College in Cork in 1972 to breakfast in the Emperador Hotel in Buenos Aires to interview one off the world’s great survivors.

Buenos Aires May 30 2007: 7.00am.

THE alarm clock went at the allotted time. I didn’t need it. I had been waking every hour, as tends to happen when the day offers something special.