Irishman who shook the World

BEFORE John Gallagher took the final few steps of his journey from the streets of London into the inner sanctum of the All Blacks, one of the all-time greats had a word in his ear.

Brian Lochore approached the uncapped Anglo-Irishman sitting anxiously in a corner of the dressing room minutes before the first match of the first World Cup. New Zealand’s revered captain turned coach addressed him by his nickname.

“Kipper,” Lochore said, jabbing a finger at his solar plexus for added effect. “Don’t do anything bloody stupid. Just play safe and don’t try to take on the whole world.”

Four weeks later, with more than a little help from those around him, Gallagher had not only done exactly that but wiped every other country off the rugby map. In doing so, the trainee policeman redefined the coaching manual on how to be an attacking full-back.

What Gallagher and the All Blacks achieved during that first World Cup in the early New Zealand winter of 1987 has long been the stuff of legend. They started by making mincemeat pasta of Mario Innocenti’s Italian innocents, routing them 12-0 on tries in a manner which bewitched a rugby world then not sure what to make of a World Cup.

Nobody beyond family and friends had heard of Gallagher in England or Ireland, let alone in New Zealand. He had gone to the other side of the world in the late winter of 1984 for what was supposed to be a season in Wellington club rugby and a job in the local police force. Everything the English copper touched turned to gold — a permanent place among the World Cup untouchables and an incredible 35 tries in 41 unbeaten matches for the All Blacks.

Nothing any of his successors achieve in the current tournament now approaching its denouement in Eden Park can realistically hope to match the sheer improbability of how an Irish policeman’s son from Lewisham played his way into one of the greatest Test teams of all-time. The fact that his last match in England had been a Kent Cup tie for Old Askeans against Old Shooters Hillians made the achievement sound all the more outrageous.

Back home in London at the age of 47 and now headmaster of Colfe’s prep school in Greenwich, Gallagher has begun to appreciate the magnitude of a victory made all the more significant by the All Blacks’ shocking failure to win any of the subsequent six World Cups.

“Looking back, I do have to pinch myself,” he said. “I was 23 at the time and every now and then I think to myself, ‘How did I do that?’ There are fantastic players around the world who deserved a World Cup winner’s medal but who never got one, either because the timing was wrong or because they were in a non-world class team. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

“Everyone called me ‘Kipper’. Jamie Salmon, who played for the All Blacks was at Wellington before me and they called him ‘Trout.’ My nickname was just an extension of the fish theme and it just stuck.”

Nobody got close to giving Wayne Shelford’s Blacks a game. France in the final came closest but even that was a no-contest, Gallagher and company breezing home by 20 points. Subsequent world champions have been afforded tickertape welcomes as well as audiences with monarchs and presidents.

The 1987 All Blacks made do with jugs of beer. ‘It was just like a Saturday night rugby booze-up — no different really from any Saturday night at any rugby club,” Gallagher recalled.

“All the families got together with the players, we enjoyed each other’s company and had a few beers. Then on the Sunday we all went our separate ways and then, on the Monday morning, we all went back to work. I used up all my leave from the police force to play in that World Cup. We got a daily allowance of a fiver and that was all. It was a very different world back then.”

Gallagher, whose parents came from opposite sides of the Irish border in Limerick city and Coleraine, Co. Derry, cashed in his chips two years later and joined Leeds rugby league club in one of the last of the six-figure deals before union ended the ‘shamateurism’ and declared itself an open sport. The shattering effects of an early spear tackle doomed his league career and when professionalism cleared the way for Gallagher’s reinstatement to union, he tried to reinvent himself in the green of Ireland and made one appearance for the A team, against England at Donnybrook in February 1996. Then into his 30s and trying to reinvent himself as a centre, he thus became the only player in rugby history to be good enough for the All Blacks but not for Ireland.

In New Zealand, Gallagher’s name is enshrined among the greats. They think so much of him that last weekend he made the long haul to take his place among the 1987 invincibles at a reunion dinner in Auckland due to have been attended by the 14 surviving members of the team. Prop John Drake died suddenly three years ago at the age of 49.

As Irish All Blacks go, Gallagher surely demands to be ranked second behind the country’s first captain, Dave Gallaher, from Ramelton in Donegal, who set the tone by leading ‘The Originals’ on their first British tour. Gallagher’s rise to is truly the stuff of legend too.

Picture: John Gallagher makes a break against Fiji in the 1987 World Cup. Picture: Getty Images