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was the '48 grand slam team actually any good?

  • 16-03-2009 2:17pm
    #1
    woodseb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 876 ✭✭✭


    considering our opponents' young fit men had been fighting a world war in the previous few years...


Comments

  • #2
    Amazotheamazing
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,048 ✭✭✭Amazotheamazing


    Even so, they were an exceptional team, would have won a second Grand Slam two years later only they drew the match with Wales in Cardiff. People still speak about Kyle as a genius 60 years after his prime for Ireland, he must have been doing somethnig right.


  • #3
    Blisterman
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,466 ✭✭✭Blisterman


    I suppose it's hard to say. Seeing as Rugby was mostly played by upper class guys in those days, would many of them actually have seen fighting in WW2?


  • #4
    woodseb
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 876 ✭✭✭woodseb


    i'm not trying to piss on their legacy or anything but its something that dawned on me when RTE were talking about the team


  • #5
    Snickers Man
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,301 ✭✭✭Snickers Man


    I think you'll find that several of the Irish team, including some southerners, had actually served in the war too.

    I also remember reading a piece in a program some years ago about the first visit of the French team to Dublin after the war in 1947. Remember, France had been expelled from the championship back in 1931 so they were very much an unknown quantity. The author, who had been at the match, remembered that people had been saying that the French were starving after their occupation and the war that had taken place on their soil and they would be a bunch of undernourished weaklings.

    Then they hit the field!

    Apparently, they had a pair of second rows called Soro and Moga who were so massive people gasped when they saw them. So much for that theory.

    The Irish team of 1948 (long before my time) were based around an extremely tough pack with a back row in particular that was outstanding. McCarthy, McKay (a WWII veteran I believe) and O'Brien were a particularly talented unit.

    In the front row was the captain Karl Mullen and another war veteran JC Daly from Cork as prop. Apparently he had built up his strength lugging radio equipment across North Africa.

    At out half was the peerless Jack Kyle a wonderful runner and kicker. Elsewhere the backs were pretty ordinary, with quite a few of them from Munster (enough said). The Irish Times report of the clinching match described it as "a grim affair of kicking and tackling". But who cares?

    The same again on Saturday would do us down to the ground.


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