Mick Doyle was an
Irish rugby union internationalThe Ireland national rugby union team represents the island of Ireland in rugby union. The team competes annually in the Six Nations Championship and every four years in the Rugby World Cup, where they reached the quarter-final stage in all but two competitions The Ireland national rugby union...
player and coach.
Doyle was born in
CastleislandCastleisland is a town and commercial centre in County Kerry in south west Ireland. The town is renowned for the width of its main street. Castleisland has a population of 2,170....
,
County KerryKerry means the "people of Ciar" which was the name of the pre-Gaelic tribe who lived in part of the present county. The legendary founder of the tribe was Ciar, son of Fergus mac Róich. In Old Irish "Ciar" meant black or dark brown, and the word continues in use in modern Irish as an adjective...
, and began playing rugby union at
Newbridge CollegeNewbridge College is a co-educational fee-paying secondary school in Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, run by the Dominican Order. The Dominican Fathers founded Newbridge College in 1852 as a boarding school for boys...
, County Kildare. He went on to study veterinary science at
University College DublinUniversity College Dublin ) - formally known as University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin is the Republic of Ireland's largest, and Ireland's second largest, university, with over 1,300 faculty and 17,000 students...
, who he also represented at
rugbyUniversity College Dublin Rugby Football Club is the rugby club of University College Dublin, based in Dublin, Ireland. They play their home games at UCD Bowl. The club was founded in 1910 and they won their first trophy, the Leinster Junior Challenge Cup, in 1914. In 1924 they won their first...
. He made his Ireland debut against
FranceThe France national rugby union team represents France in rugby union. They compete annually against England, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales in the Six Nations Championship. They have won the championship outright sixteen times, shared it a further eight times, and have completed nine grand slams...
on January 23 1965, scoring a try in the game. While representing Ireland he also studied at Cambridge University where he gained a Blue in the 1965
Varsity matchThe Varsity Match is an annual rugby union fixture played between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England. By tradition, the match is held on the second Tuesday of December. In 2005, however, this changed, and the match was on Tuesday 6 December. In 2007, it was held on a Thursday for...
against the
Oxford University RFCThe Oxford University Rugby Football Club is the rugby union club of the University of Oxford. The club contests The Varsity Match every year against Cambridge University at Twickenham.-History:...
. Doyle also studied at Edinburgh University and played club rugby for Edinburgh Wanderers before returning to Ireland.
He went on to earn the distinction of never being dropped during his 20-
capIn sports, a cap is a metaphorical term for a player's appearance on a select team, such as a national team. The term dates from the practice in the United Kingdom of awarding a cap to every player in an international match of association football...
international career as a
flankerA flanker is a position in the sport of rugby union. Flankers play in the forwards, and are generally classified as either blindside, or openside flankers; numbers six and seven respectively. The name comes from their position in a scrum in which they flank each set of forwards...
. Doyler, as he was affectionately known, scored the winning try against
WalesThe Wales national rugby union team represent Wales in international rugby union tournaments. They compete annually in the Six Nations Championship with England, France, Ireland, Italy and Scotland. Wales have won the Six Nations and its predecessors 24 times outright, second only to England with...
in
1967The 1967 Five Nations Championship was the thirty-eighth series of the rugby union Five Nations Championship. Including the previous incarnations as the Home Nations and Five Nations, this was the seventy-third series of the northern hemisphere rugby union championship. Ten matches were played...
, toured Australia with Ireland in
1967-Matches:-Touring party:*Manager: Eugene Davy*Assistant Manager: Des McKibbin*Captain: Tom Kiernan-Backs:-Forwards:...
and
South AfricaIn 1968 the British Lions toured South Africa. The tour was not success in terms of international results, the Lions losing the test series against South Africa by three matches to nil, with the other match drawn. The Lions won 15 of their 16 non-international matches, losing only to Transvaal...
with the
British LionsThe British and Irish Lions is a rugby union team made up of players from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales...
the next year.
His last game for Ireland was against
AustraliaThe Australian national rugby union team is the representative side of Australia in rugby union. The national team is nicknamed the Wallabies and competes annually with New Zealand and South Africa in the Tri-Nations Series, in which they also contest the Bledisloe Cup with New Zealand and the...
in October 1968, when he lined out alongside his brother Tommy. He coached
LeinsterLeinster Rugby, usually referred to simply as Leinster, is an Irish professional rugby union team based in Dublin, representing the Irish province of Leinster, that competes in the RaboDirect Pro 12 and also competes in the Heineken Cup...
to Interprovincial Championship success five times between 1979 and 1983 before he succeeded
Willie John McBrideWilliam James McBride, MBE, better known as Willie John McBride is a former rugby union footballer who played as a lock for Ireland and the British and Irish Lions. He played 63 Tests for Ireland including eleven as captain, and toured with the Lions five times — a record that gave him 17...
as Ireland coach during the 1984-85 season. Under Doyle's stewardship, Ireland, in 1985 won the
Triple CrownIn rugby union, the Triple Crown is an honour contested annually by the four national teams of the British Isles who compete within the larger Six Nations Championship: England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. If any one team manages to win all their games against the other three they win the...
and
Five Nations ChampionshipThe 1985 Five Nations Championship was the fifty-sixth series of the rugby union Five Nations Championship. Including the previous incarnations as the Home Nations and Five Nations, this was the ninety-first series of the northern hemisphere rugby union championship. Ten matches were played...
.
He led Ireland to the inaugural
1987 Rugby World CupThe 1987 Rugby World Cup was the first Rugby World Cup. New Zealand and Australia agreed to co-host the first ever tournament with New Zealand hosting seventeen pool stage matches, two quarter-finals and the final with Australia being the junior partner hosting seven pool matches, two...
, but that joy was tinged with sadness as he suffered a
heart attackMyocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
at the opening dinner. He battled illness and adversity and his recovery from a
brainThe human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...
problem was chronicled in his book '0.16'.
In latter years, apart from working in his veterinary practice, he was a regular contributor to rugby matters on
RTÉ Radio OneRaidió Teilifís Éireann is a semi-state company and the public service broadcaster of Ireland. It both produces programmes and broadcasts them on television, radio and the Internet. The radio service began on January 1, 1926, while regular television broadcasts began on December 31, 1961, making...
.
Mick Doyle was killed in a car crash in
DungannonDungannon is a medium-sized town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is the third-largest town in the county and a population of 11,139 people was recorded in the 2001 Census. In August 2006, Dungannon won Ulster In Bloom's Best Kept Town Award for the fifth time...
on 11 May 2004.
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