Rugby Warrior (11 page)

A
fter Dylan’s dad had been driven away, and the Gardaí had finished questioning Eoin and
Caoimhe
about their ordeal, Mr McCaffrey returned to the stadium to collect them.

‘Alan Handy was quite a hero,’ the headmaster said, as they sipped tea in his office in Castlerock. ‘If he hadn’t told the Gardaí and Mr McRae about the van, who knows what might have happened. I’m still not sure how on earth he spotted the little girl being put in the van, but all’s well that ends well.’

‘Well, I’m just delighted that everyone came out of it unhurt,’ said Dylan’s mother. ‘I was truly terrified for a while there. Caoimhe and Eoin were very brave too.’

‘Well, I didn’t do very much,’ shrugged Eoin.

‘No, you were very good to Caoimhe,’ replied her
mum, ‘and she was much happier when you were in the van.’

‘Well, I’m just glad it’s all over – and we have another lovely trophy to remind us of the drama,’ chuckled Mr Finn, who had just come into the office with Dixie Madden and Eoin’s parents.

‘Yes, but a trophy wouldn’t have mattered very much if any of these fine youngsters had been hurt,’ said Dixie.

Eoin smiled at his grandad.

‘And I understand extra congratulations are in order,’ Grandad added. ‘It has been quite a week for you.’

‘Yes,’ Eoin blushed, ‘I suppose it was.’

‘Where are you going on that trip with your class?’ the old man asked. ‘And can I come too?’ he joked.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible Mr Madden,’
interrupted
the headmaster. ‘They only pay for twenty-two boys and three teachers. But we are going to the place Eoin requested – the battlefields of the Western Front in the Great War. I’m sure the boys will learn a lot from it and we can pay our respects to Dave Gallaher too.’

Eoin smiled, relieved that the headmaster had agreed with his suggestion. But talk of Dave Gallaher only reminded him that he had failed his ghostly friend by losing the precious piece of cloth.

Another knock came to the office door, and in walked
Inspector Condren.

‘Well, Mr McCaffrey, Mrs Coonan, that all worked out well in the end. He won’t be troubling you for a long time yet. He had planned to take Caoimhe and Dylan away to the continent. He even had them booked on the car ferry tonight. Lord knows what he had planned for Eoin though.’

Eoin winced, and the adults chatted about the
dramatic
afternoon for a few more minutes before the senior Garda rose to leave.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘When we searched the perpetrator, we found this on him. One of the lads in the station recognised it and we worked out where he got it soon enough.’ He handed a clear plastic bag to Eoin, inside of which was a ragged piece of coarse black material with the famous silver fern.

‘In the end he admitted he’d stolen it from you at the RDS,’ the Inspector added.

‘Thank you!’ gushed Eoin, overjoyed that he had recovered the precious article.

Later, once the excitement had died down and the various relatives had returned to County Tipperary, Eoin and Alan went for another ramble down to the stream.

Eoin was keen to return the crest to Dave, but there was no sign of him in his usual haunt. Brian seemed to
have disappeared too.

‘That was some day,’ said Alan. ‘I nearly got the fright of my life when I saw Brian, and I felt a right idiot
talking
to him in front of the whole class.’

‘Fair play to you,’ replied Eoin. ‘You really kept your head. It must have been deadly when McRae drove the bus in front of the gates. Unfortunately I didn’t have much of a view tied up in the back!’

‘I didn’t know what to say when the Guards asked me about Caoimhe. I told them I saw something funny and went over and heard her crying in the back. I don’t think they believed me, but I couldn’t tell them how I really knew.’

‘No, they would have locked us up too! I don’t think the Gardaí believe in ghosts,’ Eoin said with a grin.

They wandered back to the dormitory block, and were delighted to see that Dylan had been returned to his place in the corner.

‘Hi Dyl, that was some crack today, wasn’t it?’ asked Alan.

‘Yeah, it was a bit scary for a while,’ Dylan replied, ‘but at least mum can live in peace for a while now till it’s all sorted. They might even let me stay here again next year!’

T
he trip to Belgium was a memorable one for Mr Lawson’s history class. As head of history Mr Finn came along too, and as a special thank-you to their Kiwi coach they invited Mr McRae as well. They saw the sites of several of the battlefields, which were now mainly farmland or parks. The vast cemeteries were very moving places for the students, who listened as Mr Lawson told them the story of boys and men who came from all over the world to die in enormous numbers in this small area.

On the last day the small group drove to Nine Elms cemetery, and asked the man on the gate could he show them to the grave they wished to visit. ‘Gallaher? You will not need directions,’ he said. ‘He is ze one with ze most visitors’.

They wandered along the rows of white gravestones, reading some names and pausing when a familiar
Irish-sounding
name was discovered. On Plot 11, they stopped at Row D, Number 8. The white stone had a Celtic cross carved into it, with a fern at its centre.

There was a New Zealand flag planted at the foot of the grave, and Mr Finn stooped to place an Irish
tricolour
alongside. Mr Lawson told the boys about the man who lay beneath the soil, and asked Eoin to say a few words too.

‘I’m never any good at this sort of thing,’ Eoin started, ‘but I’d like to tell you why I asked could we visit here. I thought it was interesting that a rugby legend could end up fighting in a war half way round the world from his home, but I realised they were different times to ours, and we are lucky they are. Boys only a couple of years older than us are buried here. I found the story of Dave Gallaher really interesting and wanted to come to pay respect to his spirit.’

Mr Finn asked the boys to say a quiet prayer if they wished, and then urged them back to the bus for the start of their journey home to Dublin.

‘Can I have a minute on my own, sir?’ asked Eoin. ‘I’d like that.’

Mr Finn agreed but told him to hurry as they had to be at the airport in less than an hour.

As the teacher walked away, Eoin turned back to loo
at the grave, and was only a little surprised to see Dave standing right behind the tombstone.

‘This is where my mortal remains lie, but happily my spirit gets to wander the world a bit still,’ he smiled.

‘And I’m very grateful for that,’ replied Eoin.

‘I’ve a bit of good news too,’ he added, and took the silver fern crest carefully from his pocket, still in the plastic bag.

‘Ah, that’s fantastic,’ Dave replied, before he stopped and looked into Eoin’s eyes.

‘But to be honest, I didn’t really miss it as much as I thought. It made me think that it’s more important that pieces like this are available to the living to help remind them of the dead. You did a brilliant job on my pro-ject and I think you’d give the silver fern a good home – I’m not sure if I’ll ever be back in Ireland so maybe that will help you remember me.’

Eoin’s eyes started to fill up, but Dave raised his hand.

‘Ah, stop that now, I’m long past tears myself and everyone that ever cared about me is long dead
themselves
. Get home to Ireland and work on that sidestep. You’ve a cracking rugby talent and I want to hear all about you in the years to come.’

Dave placed his hand on Eoin’s shoulder, and
disappeared
.

Eoin walked back to the bus slowly, blinking furiously to disperse a tear.

I
first wrote about Dave Gallaher in
The Sunday Tribune
newspaper in 2001, when I bemoaned the fact that he was almost unknown in the land of his birth. A reader, Letterkenny RFC member Robbie Love, agreed. He went on to lead a campaign to rename the club's ground Dave Gallaher Park, which was crowned by a visit by several members of the All Black tourists in 2005.

References in
Rugby Warrior
to Dave Gallaher's life and death are based on real events, as is the story of the poem by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy.

The character of Brian is based on a real rugby player, Brian Hanrahan, who died in 1927. References to his life and death are based on real events. His story is told in ‘The Fatal Scrum' in
Lansdowne Road: The Stadium, The Matches, The Greatest Days
by Gerard Siggins and Malachy Clerkin (The O'Brien Press 2010).

All other references to people, alive or dead, are fictional.

GERARD SIGGINS was born in Dublin and has lived almost all his life in the shadow of Lansdowne Road; he’s been attending rugby matches there since he was small enough for his dad to lift him over the turnstiles. He is a sports journalist and worked for the
Sunday Tribune
for many years. His first book about rugby player, Eoin Madden,
Rugby Spirit
, is also published by The O’Brien Press.

‘Ger Siggins, my first editor, who actually
christened me RO’CK, has written [Rugby Spirit].
And it’s excellent. End of.’

Ross O’Carroll-Kelly

A new school, a new sport, an old mystery …

Eoin’s has just started a new school … and a new sport. Everyone at school is mad about rugby, but Eoin hasn’t even held a rugby ball before! And why does everybody seem to know more about his own grandad than he does?