Only flickering black and white images still exist of Jack Kyle in action on the pitch, but in the golden age of Irish rugby union, just after the second world war, the nation’s fly-half was the side’s undisputed star turn. The history of rugby union may abound with tall tales but it is no exaggeration to say that Kyle, who has died aged 88, was the greatest player ever to pull on the green shirt. It can even be argued that he was the greatest ever Irish sportsman.
Certainly he was the most loved. Kyle, whose 46 caps were a world record for a fly-half, until Rob Andrew of England surpassed it in 1992, was a modest man who forged a career as a surgeon when his rugby days were over. He moved to Zambia where for three decades he worked in a hospital in a mining town, Chingola. Until he was 60, when the hospital gave him a partner, he was the only surgeon in the 500-bed hospital on the border of what was then Zaire. Kyle became a hero for a second time, even though most of his patients would never have known of his sporting exploits. Certainly they would never have been told about them by the man himself.
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