Doyle Death Overshadows

THE Dublin Journalists Golf Society have been in Lahinch all week, our annual pilgrimage to one of the best golf courses in the world never mind the country.

The competition and the craic are legendary in journalistic circles even if the standard of play would frustrate the likes of my old golfing partner Henrik Larsson.

Amidst the various sideshows and matches, there is an award every year for the man who states the bleeding obvious. And I won it on Tuesday.

Why? Because I suggested that death is never expected, particularly by the man or woman unlucky enough to die.

I made the statement standing on the side of the 18th after another particularly frustrating day on this magical links. And I made it after I had heard of the death, in a car accident, of former Irish rugby coach Mick Doyle.

Mick was killed up North on Tuesday morning, the victim of a car accident when his own vehicle was in collision with a truck on a road just outside Derry.

It stunned us all when we heard the news in Lahinch. Many of us had come to know the great Doyler as a colleague when he worked as a media commentator for RTE and the Sunday Independent in the years after leaving the Ireland job.

I didn’t know him well, not well enough to even consider going to his funeral, but I did enjoy his company on a couple of occasions. And Mick Doyle was as entertaining off air as he was so well informed in his role as rugby analyst on RTE radio.

He was gregarious at all times, funny and biting in equal measure, a man who knew his sport inside out and loved it.

Mick Doyle was also a bloody good coach, a man who won the Triple Crown and the then Five Nations championship with Ireland away back in 1985 when he brought a modern approach to the game long before professionalism landed in this country.

Doyle will be missed by anyone who cares about rugby in this country. There’s no doubt about that.

There is also no doubt that his death is a great tragedy, not least for his partner and children. They almost lost their best friend to illness a couple of years back, so to see him killed in a car crash now, after he fought his way back from a serious stroke, is particularly heartbreaking.

The news of his death offered something approaching perspective on Tuesday afternoon. Suddenly that missed putt didn’t seem important after all.