My Life in Rugby: Ralph Keyes – former Munster and Ireland fly-half
Having followed in my father’s footsteps and played out-half for Cork Constitution and Munster, I’d been in and around the senior Ireland team for a couple of years but had to play second fiddle to Paul Dean.
Unfortunately for Paul, he suffered a cruciate ligament injury in the 1986 Five Nations, against Wales, and myself and Tony Ward were left to fight it out for the No.10 jersey for the next game against England.
Thankfully I got the nod after playing well for my club the week before the trip to Twickenham.
England won 25-20 and our forwards got pilloried for being blown away in the scrum. However, we can’t have done too badly to lose by just five points and score three tries in difficult playing conditions. Instead of building on that appearance I had to watch Brian Smith ‘helicopter’ his way into the side for a season or two before he headed back to Australia.
As a Munster man, I grew up on stories of the 1978 win over the All Blacks; try-scorer Christy Cantillon captained me in my debut season at Cork Con when we won the Senior Cup. So, to get the chance to play them myself, 11 years later, was another big highlight.
Ordinarily the game would have been played in midweek but New Zealand asked for it to be played on a Saturday, it was that big a deal to them. They’d been getting it in the ear for that famous loss for over a decade and retribution was at the forefront of their minds. We were in the game up until early in the second half and then their overall fitness played a part and they won 31-9.
Winning the first All-Ireland League title with Cork Con in 1991 helped me get back in the Ireland frame in the nick of time for the 1991 World Cup.
There was a big buzz around the tournament and we qualified for the quarters despite losing to Scotland. In a funny way, that worked out in our favour as it meant we had to play Australia at home – a far more appealing prospect than facing the aggressive Samoan back row at Murrayfield.
We decided not to come in to Dublin the night before the match and ended up getting stuck in traffic on the bus. The driver tried to take a short cut but that made the situation worse and we only got into Lansdowne Lane half an hour before kick-off – around 45 minutes later than planned. That was when I knew the forwards take way too long to put their strapping on because, on this occasion, it only took them ten minutes and we got out on the pitch without any problems.
I think the fact it all happened so quickly worked in our favour; we didn’t have time to dwell on the enormity of the occasion. I’d never seen an atmosphere like it when we scored through Gordon Hamilton. Equally, you could hear a pin drop when Michael Lynagh scored at the death to break our hearts.
The disappointing thing from our point of view was that we had been playing well and would have backed ourselves in the semi-final against an All Blacks side that was below their best and divided by inter-provincial rivalries.
I decided to call it quits after a disappointing Five Nations campaign in 1992 in which we lost all four games. I was 31 at the time and had a young family to think about. Thankfully, though, I’m still involved in the game through my media duties with RTE television.
*As told to Jon Newcombe
