Obituary: Andrew Mulligan

By TONY O'REILLY, teammate and friend

British Lions and Ireland halfback.

Died aged 65.


The record book will confirm that of the great Irish halfbacks of the past century, Andy Mulligan compared with the best. He had real pace, a lancing break, a superb pass and was a fine reader of the game.

But most important of all, we shall remember him as a joyful character, a vaudevillian who was at heart that imprecise thing called "a rugger man."

In his student days at Cambridge, he would go anywhere for a rugby match, festival or dinner. He was a troubadour. His motto was, "Have boots, will travel."

He failed to be selected for the 1959 Lions and was heartbroken, as indeed I was, at his omission. But Stan Coughtrie, the Scottish halfback who had edged Andrew out of the team, was declared unfit and Andrew was flown out to New Zealand for perhaps the happiest five months of his life. The team scored 756 points and were the highest scoring Lions team of the century.

There are two photographs which I think capture this odyssey. One is of both of us playing and singing in the Hi/Diddle/Griddle, an Auckland nightspot, on the Thursday night before the final test. A Herald photographer took an immortal photograph and it was captioned on the front page the next day: "Lions train for final test."

Happily, we won the test to record the first win by a Lions team in New Zealand in 30 years.

It would be fair to say that Andrew Mulligan, with two inspired moments, won the game for us. One, a reverse pass to Bev Risman, which, after a beautiful sidestep, put Risman in at the corner; and the other, a blindside break which put me over for the last try of the tour.

The other picture, published here, shows what Andrew was all about. On the Sunday after the final test the team went to Auckland Airport, where a crowd of 5000 were seeing us off after five months in their country. No one in New Zealand begrudged us the victory (though perhaps we should have split the series, having lost the first test 18-17, scoring four tries against six penalties by Don Clarke).

Mulligan was in the control tower with a microphone in hand and a battered straw hat on his head. He was misdirecting aircraft all over New Zealand, diverting them to Tahiti, Fiji and other ports of call. He had turned the control tower intercom on publicly and the entire crowd collapsed with merriment at this foray into utter chaos.

His natural talents as a communicator led him to jobs with the BBC and newspapers. He later joined the EEC and was a press officer in Brussels and Washington.

Mulligan, above all else, wanted to be a successful entrepreneur. He failed to get his great dream of a transcontinental television company under way but was so near it at the end that one can only conjure at the might-have-beens.

In all of this, he retained his calm unsinkability and boundless optimism. The voice would come on the phone. "AJ," it would say, "I have this wonderful idea."

Mulligan was the Rupert Brooke of his generation - a fair-haired beacon, a lover of life and poetry and art, with a penchant for friendship and generosity.

Writing on Sir Donald Bradman, the late R.C. Robertson-Glasgow observed that Bradman had both poetry and murder in his heart. For Andrew, the game was only about poetry. It was the rhythm of his life. It will be the recollection of his friends.