A great read....

jacothelad

http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/other-rugby/im-not-sure-id-have-wanted-to-be-a-professional-paul-kimmage-meets-rugby-legend-mike-gibson-34430028.html
Interview with Michael Gibson.

sheep?

Crickey. I'm too young to have ever watched him play (only what I've seen and read online), but that was an brilliant read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjGrNxCVDt4

Zzippy

That was excellent! Just wasted the last hour in work enjoying that...

vienne86

Well I have to admit to being plenty old enough to remember Mike Gibson.....and the other guys mentioned in the clip posted above. What a lovely interview. He really was a great at 10 and at 12......just trying to remember who replaced him at 10 when he moved to 12.

Thanks very much for posting the link to this interview, Jaco. Yes, a great read.

jacothelad

vienne86 wrote: »

Well I have to admit to being plenty old enough to remember Mike Gibson.....and the other guys mentioned in the clip posted above. What a lovely interview. He really was a great at 10 and at 12......just trying to remember who replaced him at 10 when he moved to 12.

Thanks very much for posting the link to this interview, Jaco. Yes, a great read.

Barry Mcgann.

Snickers Man

jacothelad wrote: »

Barry Mcgann.

Ah yes. Barry McGann. A portly Corkman who played for both Lansdowne and Cork Constitution. Like most Munster fly halfs, was happiest and most proficient when putting boot to ball a la Mick "The Kick" English, Ralph Keyes and Ronan O'Gara.

True story, apparently. McGann was once on a train to Dublin. A quiet serious sober looking young man was sharing the carriage with him. As a genial Corkman McGann tried to engage him in conversation. His companion was polite, if not effusive. After a few minutes McGann decided to introduce himself.

"I'm Barry McGann," he said. "Cork Constitution and Ireland out half. I'm on the way to a national squad training session."

"I know," said the other. "I'm Mike Gibson, your inside centre. Maybe if you passed the ball to me once in a blue moon you might recognise me!"

Snickers Man

But seriously....

What a wonderful interview! Kimmage, at his job, is like many great sportsmen at theirs; he makes it look easy when it really isn't.

The interviewee is the star of the piece, not the questioner. The way he got Gibson to open up about his family background and sports history without being at all intrusive or prurient is actually a very difficult thing to do.

Fascinating that his uncle captained Belfast Celtic and later played for Glenavon. Those are/were two teams whose supporters had vastly different outlooks.

I too remember Gibson as a player. What I most remember was that he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. The clips above showed him running in a few tries other people might have made but he was always there to receive the pass.

He was also a great man for last ditch tackles. One I particularly remember was from the only occasion in my youth when Ireland beat France in Paris. January 30th 1972. Ireland had built up a lead with two tries before half time but France were coming back into it in the second half.

The French left winger, a diminutive speed merchant called Jacques Cantoni (OO EE Cantoni? ...No?) managed to get over in the corner but Gibson tackled him, got underneath him and rolled him into touch in goal to save the try. And remember, Gibson was a centre. What was he doing tackling a man in the corner?

That match, Ireland's first victory in Paris in 20 years (and the last for another 28) gave real hope that 1972 would be a good year for Irish rugby. Sadly, the following day the real world intruded with the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry. Although Ireland travelled to Twickenham and won a fortnight later, the tense situation saw both Scotland and Wales decline to come to Dublin and the mouth-watering prospect of what might have been a Grand Slam decider in the last match, between Ireland and the great Welsh team of the time, never happened.

It was perhaps on the Lions Tour of 1971 that Gibson built his greatest reputation because he was playing in a stellar back line..Gareth Edwards, Barry John, John Dawes, Gerald Davies, David Duckham, JPR Williams and yet he stood out from all of them. The New Zealanders in particular rated him as the best they'd seen.

A history of Rugby Union, co authored by Carwyn James, the Welsh coach of that Lions team, and the notoriously anti-Irish Daily Telegraph rugby correspondent John Reason had this to say about Gibson.

"Gibson..was technically the most completely equipped player of them all. There was nothing that he could not do, except perhaps believe that he was as good as he really was. He knew what he could do, and yet paradoxically, he lacked self confidence. Other players with half his ability would have been insufferable. His attitude, in the team sense, was almost one of diffidence.

"This was born of years of playing an inevitably restricted game for Ireland; of making do with scraps of possession. With the 1971 Lions, Mike Gibson rediscovered the joys of instinctive rugby...

"...Carwyn James once tried to recall the number of times Gibson had put the 1971 Lions into attacking positions either from defence or from threatening situations but eventually gave up because he lost count"

My favourite line from the interview: " I've never understood people who do not like to talk about sport."

Man after my own (dare I say, our own) heart (s). But operating in a different league.

Legend!