Jack Kyle - rugby legend, respected surgeon, gentleman 

07 January 2015

With the passing of Jack Kyle, Queen’s has lost one of its most respected graduates and Ireland one of its all-time sporting heroes. 

John Wilson Kyle was born in Belfast on February 10th 1926, one of five children. Son of Elizabeth (nee Warren) and John Kyle, a manager at the North British Rubber Company, Jack was born into a sporting family. His sister, Betty, became an Irish hockey international.

Following in the footsteps of his elder brother Eric, who played rugby for Ulster, Jack first began to show promise as a schoolboy at the Belfast Royal Academy where he also excelled at boxing and cricket. He played full-back for Ulster Schools but became an out-half when he went to Queen’s to study medicine in 1944.

Student

By all accounts he was not the most academically brilliant of students, though on the sports field his progress was spectacular. A University Blue Recipient for seven straight years between 1945 and 1951, during his time at Queen’s he advanced rapidly to represent both Ulster and Ireland. He made his international debut in an uncapped wartime international against France in January 1947, when he was described as “a pale, freckled medical student with crinkly ginger hair; the discovery of the season”.

Jack graduated from Queen’s in 1951 and went into practice as a GP in Belfast.

Over a sparkling sporting career, he went on to win 52 international caps (46 for Ireland and six for the British and Irish Lions), which at the time was a world record. He played in Irish sides that won a Five Nations Grand Slam in 1948, a Triple Crown (wins over England, Scotland and Wales) in 1949, and a championship in 1951.

He was selected for the Lions side that toured New Zealand and Australia in 1950, playing in all six Tests, appearing in 19 games and scoring seven tries. In the same year he was formally recognised as one of the top six players in the world.

A literate and quietly religious man, Jack would often read poetry before a match and took The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - a translation by Edward FitzGerald of almost one thousand poems originally written in Persian - on the Lions tour. He said the greatest compliment he ever received was from the Irish poet and fellow Queen’s honorary graduate, Louis MacNeice who, when asked if he could make one wish, replied: “I would like to have played rugby like Jackie Kyle.”

During the golden era of Jack Kyle, rugby was most definitely an amateur sport. Even before international games there was rarely any pre-match practice. “Those of us who were available,” Jack once said, “might have thrown a ball about for an hour or so on the Friday afternoon. Planned tactics never came into it.” Before one game the Irish captain’s team address is said to have concluded: “I think a subtle mix of runnin’, jinkin’ and kickin’ should just work out fine.”

Jack Kyle’s running style earned him the nickname of “the ghost”, as defenders were often left clutching at thin air in his wake as he weaved past them. Famously, after Ireland had played France at Ravenhill Road (now Kingspan Stadium) in 1953, Arthur McWeeney wrote of his phantom-like style in the Sunday Independent:

"They seek him here, they seek him there,                                                                                  

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.                                                                                            

That paragon of pace and guile,                                                                                                      

That damned elusive Jackie Kyle."

His last Irish appearance was against Scotland in March 1958, though he continued to play club rugby with North of Ireland in Belfast.

On retirement Jack was the world’s most-capped rugby international. His 46 Irish appearances were a world record for a fly-half, until England’s Rob Andrew surpassed that total in 1992 and it would take Ireland another 61 years to win a second Grand Slam. On that occasion (March 21, 2009), Jack, then aged 83, was present in Cardiff to congratulate team captain Brian O’Driscoll. O’Driscoll was honoured by Queen’s just a few days after Jack’s passing, when he was awarded an honorary degree during winter Graduation Week.  

Surgeon

When his rugby career was over, Jack embarked on a new life, accompanied by his wife, Shirley, a law graduate whom he met at Queen’s, and married in 1957. He became a medical missionary - a surgeon - first in Indonesia and Sumatra, before settling in Africa where he worked at the same hospital in Chigola in Zambia’s Copperbelt for 34 years. For most of that time he was the only surgeon in the 500-bed hospital.

His marriage to Shirley, who died in 2009, ended in divorce while he was in Zambia. The couple had two children, a son Caleb and a daughter Justine.

Appointed an OBE in 1959, Jack’s work in Africa was honoured with an honorary doctorate from Queen’s in 1991, and a lifetime achievement award by the Irish Journal of Medical Science and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Ireland.

He returned to Northern Ireland in 2000 at the age of 74, retiring to Bryansford in Co Down at the foot of the Mountains of Mourne. A regular attendee and sought-after guest at University events, he was keynote speaker at the Annual Dinner of the Queen’s University Association, London in 2004. Two years later he was guest of honour – and expert analyst – when Queen’s alumni in Toronto gathered to watch an Ireland rugby match. In 2008, and due to the very large numbers of those attending a Golden Reunion at the University, he delivered the same welcome speech to two separate groups of graduates in two different venues! And on yet another occasion, he was a special guest at an Out to Lunch event in a packed Great Hall at Queen’s. Everyone wanted to hear from Jack.

Arguably the greatest fly-half the game of rugby has ever seen he was undoubtedly the most loved and respected. Voted the greatest ever Irish player in a poll by the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) in 2002, six years later, he was inducted into the IRB (International Rugby Board) hall of fame.

In 2002, and in recognition of his national and international sporting achievements, Queen’s set up the Jack Kyle Sports Academy which awards annual bursaries to the University’s most promising rugby stars.  

Tributes

Speaking at a special Service of Thanksgiving on 2 December in Fisherwick Church where Jack had attended during his time at Queen’s, close friend Colin Morris said: "You realised that it wasn't the rush of adrenalin at great sporting occasions that drove him. What really drove him was the agonising sense of the need to be humanely useful to those in need.

"He had genius but he had something rarer than that, he had goodness. His solemnity was counterbalanced by that mischievous Irish sense of humour of his."

An enduringly modest and grounded gentleman, perhaps the greatest tribute to Jack Kyle was paid to him by another Ireland and Lions legend, Willie John McBride: "We talk about gentleman, I could not sum that word up any better than saying - give me Jack Kyle."

Jack Kyle died on November 28 2014; he is survived by his son Caleb and daughter Justine and grandchildren Jack, Calum and Erin.

 

Donations to the Jack Kyle Sports Academy at Queen’s can be made online using the (Fund Name) drop-down menu.

For further information please contact Natasha Sharma (tel: +44 (0)28 9097 3928, email natasha.sharma@qub.ac.uk) or go to on the Sports Academies webpage.  

For more on Queen’s Rugby Academy, click here.

Headline photograph: Pacemaker  

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