Dublin Hospitals Rugby Cup: Tales of japes, rows, and skulduggery
Luke Dan, Beaumont Hospital, is tackled by Michael Boland, St Vincents Hospital in the 2008 Dublin Hospitals Cup final. Picture: Matt Browne
History tells us that Andy Courtney was born in Nenagh, graduated from University College Dublin (UCD) and became the first man from UCD to represent Ireland in rugby when he finished on the losing side against the Scots in the Edinburgh suburb of Inverleith back in 1920.
That’s the basic sketch.
What history rarely does is illuminate us with the abundance of colour that exists between the outlines. People and the intricacies of their lives tend to be lost within the black-and-white pages and volumes of records, but Courtney was, by all accounts, something of a character.
His is one of the many stories that jump off the pages of The Hospital Pass: 140 years of the Dublin Hospitals Cup, which charts the journey since a group of surgeons and physicians met at Lawrence’s shop on Grafton Street and stumped up the not-inconsiderable sum of £1 each to lay the foundations for their new enterprise.
“Andy Courtney was a medical student,” says Dr Con Feighery who, along with Dr Michael Crowe and Dr Michael Farrell, authored the book.
“He had republican leanings and there is a story of him throwing a military motorbike into the Liffey and being pursued by the Black and Tans, or people like that.”
The incident is said to have happened at the 1917 funeral of hunger striker Thomas Ashe.
Courtney had to give a British army platoon the slip another time, when they surrounded the field where he was playing in College Park.
Jogging nonchalantly past the cordon with his fellow players, he made his escape via the Turkish Baths on Dawson Street.
Even that anecdote doesn’t do his story justice.
“There’s a great story about a dinner and a member of the rugby team who was Norwegian and, when they were being chucked out of one place, claimed diplomatic immunity to try and escape the wrath of the gardaí as they ejected everyone.”
Tales of japes, rows, and skulduggery stitch their way through pages wonderfully embellished by the tome’s designer, Garrett Bennis.
So do names such as Courtney’s, who is just one among well over a hundred internationals to have displayed their skills in the tournament on fields that include Lansdowne Road, Donnybrook, and Anglesea Road.
Feighery earned three caps himself in 1972. Of the first 200 players capped for Ireland, it’s remarkable to learn that 44 of them were either medical students or doctors. Some even progressed from wearing green to red, among them Karl Mullen, who captained the British and Irish Lions team that toured New Zealand in 1950.
Crowe’s own father, Morgan Snr, was actually forced to pull out of the 1930 Lions tour to New Zealand and Australia after picking up an injury in the Hospitals Cup. It’s this sort of personal thread with the tournament, embellished by all three authors’ own experiences as players, that is among the project’s chief strengths.
Add in their long careers in medicine, competition records kept by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, and the extensive newspaper reports on the cup from the mid-20th century, and what they have produced after three to four years of work is both treasure trove and voluminous love letter.
Due regard has been given both to the rugby and to the medicine. One man who excelled in both spheres was Terence Millin, who captained Duns to the Hospitals Cup title in 1927, did the same with Trinity in the Leinster Senior Cup, scored a try in Ireland’s win over Wales in 1925, and topped it all with a standout career in urology.
It was in a “seminal Lancet publication” in 1945 that Millin gave notice of a new technique for prostatectomies, which involved the removal of the prostate in such a way that reduced complications. The procedure was named after him and it propelled the man from Co Down to global prominence.
Another of the cup’s old boys is Gerry McEntee, two-time All-Ireland football winner with Meath, consultant hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgeon and, according to Feighery, a prime mover in lighting a fire under his fellows at the Mater Hospital when he felt they might not have been committing sufficiently to the Hospitals Cup.
The GAA thread unspools liberally and in all manner of directions between the covers.
Michael Davitt may have been a founding patron of the famed Gaelic sporting body, but two of his sons, Michael Jnr and Robert, captained the Mater rugby team’s XV and played for UCD, where both served as honorary secretary.
Many of those who crossed over from the native games into the foreign code did so under pseudonyms during the days of ‘The Ban’ including, according to the book, Donal Keenan, who won a pair of Celtic Crosses with Roscommon in the 1940s and later became the GAA’s 24th president.
Sean Lavan, a two-time Olympian and former Mayo footballer, who is said to have invented the solo run, was another Hospitals Cup participant. David Hickey, better known for winning three All-Irelands with Dublin, turned out for Clontarf, UCD, and La Rochelle in the 1970s and won the Hospitals Cup every year he played.
On it goes.
In modern times, the likes of Felipe Contepomi, Jamie Roberts, and Leinster current back row Josh Murphy managed to juggle the twin demands of professional rugby and medical studies, but the last internationals to grace the Hospitals Cup stage were Emmet Byrne and Romania’s Mihai Vioreanu. That was 14 years ago.
It’s all a far cry from the 1960s and ’70s when Feighery turned out.
“The whole change when professionalism came in is dealt with in the book. The whole idea now of someone like myself studying medicine but also managing to play first-level rugby for UCD, then getting on to the Leinster team, and even getting luckier and playing for Ireland, that whole experience just doesn’t happen now.
“Having said that, the standard is probably as high as it ever was. Even though you don’t have the high-flying internationals and inter pros, you have a lot of people who played a very high level in schools who aren’t able to play a higher AIL level because of their studies. They throw their lot into this competition.”
Fears that it would wither on the vine, fatally compromised by professionalism and the amalgamation or relocation of so many once-great medical institutions around the capital, have been misplaced. A five-team round robin followed by a final, traditionally played on the Friday before Christmas Day, has solidified its place in the calendar.
Its actual status in rugby’s firmament hasn’t always been clear. Past suggestions that it was Ireland’s oldest rugby cup competition fall just short against the Ulster Schools version, which began in 1876. Claims that it stands as the world’s longest continually running rugby event are countered by a five-year suspension due to World War I.
However, that was the one and only break in the chain until Covid-19 brought everything and everyone to a standstill in 2020. This year’s competition is technically “currently running” but, in reality, is on hold now until the spring. What better time for the re-emergence of such a hardy perennial?
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