Phil Orr, President of the Irish Rugby Football Union, who had played with Duggan for Leinster, Ireland and the Lions, described him as “a warrior. One commentator said Duggan had “a physical courage bordering on suicidal recklessness”. The fitness-conscious backs hated these excursions and escaped as soon as they could.ĭonal Lenihan, a former Irish captain, described Duggan as the best all-round forward he had ever played with, “particularly in terms of sheer ruggedness and physical and mental toughness”. It’s like fitness: if you think you’re fit, you are fit.”īefore home international matches in Dublin, Duggan and Moss Keane would drag the whole team to a bar run by Sean Lynch, a former Irish and Lions prop, off St Stephen’s Green, for “a few pints”, which usually meant six or seven. He used to say: “The main benefit of these things is between the ears. On the morning of a match Duggan used to eat half a dozen raw eggs, his only concession to healthy living. Meanwhile, during a long delay at Twickenham, while an injured player was being attended to, Duggan was seen leaning over the fence and taking a few puffs from a fan’s cigarette.
Once, playing against France, he handed an unfinished cigarette to the referee as he went on to the pitch – a moment caught by the television cameras. “Training,” he averred, “took the edge off my form.” A colleague remarked of him: “The dangling fag was as essential to his off-field style as a comb was superfluous.”ĭuggan used to smoke several cigarettes in the dressing-room before a match “to settle my nerves”. He was also renowned for hating all forms of training, and avoided it as much as possible. I believe there shouldn’t be a referee on the field.
I was buggered anyway.” He once said he most enjoyed “a good old-fashioned game of rugby, fisticuffs and all, where the referee doesn’t get involved. He was the first Irishman to be sent off in a Five Nations match in 1976, for punching a Welsh opponent, Geoff Wheel, who was also dismissed.ĭuggan argued that “sent off” was not the right way to describe his departure – “The referee simply asked me if I would mind leaving the field. He played in all four Tests of the British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand in 1977.Ī tall, raw-boned, tousle-haired figure with coal-scuttle hands and an unusually high pain threshold, he was perpetually engaged in rugby’s rougher arts in ruck and maul and at the back of the line-out. He made 41 appearances for Ireland, all but two of them at number 8, between 19, captaining the team for his last three matches.
Willie Duggan, who has died of a suspected heart attack aged 67, was one of the most colourful characters in Irish rugby and also one of the hardest and most talented back-row forwards in the British Isles.
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