Ollie Campbell, rugby player
CLOTHES MAY MAKETH the man, but it was Lions rugby that was the making of Ollie Campbell. The legendary outhalf was all set to take his place in the family menswear business, but he took a career break and donned the Ireland shirt, taking the team all the way to a Triple Crown victory in 1979. In his short but spectacular tenure on the rugby pitch, Campbell won 22 caps for Ireland, and was capped seven times for the Lions. His star burned brightly for eight years, but then, plagued by hamstring injuries, Campbell retired from rugby and went back into the family business, but he still wears the mantle of greatness with quiet pride.
Seamus Oliver Campbell was born in Westland Row in Dublin, in 1954, and grew up in Malahide, attending primary school on the Yellow Walls Road. Malahide, said Campbell, was the ideal place for a sports-mad kid like him to grow up in, being well-served with sporting facilities and playing fields. When he was just nine, he went to his first rugby international, Ireland against the All Blacks, in 1963, and was a confirmed rugby fan from that day on. He became obsessed with New Zealand rugby, trawling through Greene’s bookshop on Clare Street for secondhand books on the All-Blacks. He went to Belvedere College, and was on the team that won the Leinster Schools’ Senior Cup in 1971 and 1972.
In 1979, rugby hit the front pages as newspapers scrambled to report on the battle between Campbell and Tony Ward for the Ireland number 10 shirt. The headline in the Irish Press screamed, “Ward out, Campbell in” – hardly anyone paid attention to the story below it, announcing the Pope’s Irish visit. Pubs and rugby clubs buzzed with Campbell v Ward chatter, but the two men at the centre of the controversy remained friends, watching with bemusement as the debate raged.
Campbell was the Lions’ leading points scorer in 1980, but his finest moment came in 1982 when his kicking prowess powered the Ireland team to Triple Crown victory against Scotland. Ireland hadn’t won a triple crown since 1949, which made victory even more sweet.
As Campbell’s fame grew, so did the legend. Samuel Beckett was said to have called him a “genius”, while sports correspondents called him “the thinking man’s player” whose technique “extended to higher dimensions”.
Alas, Campbell couldn’t transcend his recurring hamstring injury, and was finally forced to bow out of the sport in 1984.
Last February, the former Belvedere boy was given a special award by the Ireland Funds organisation, in a ceremony at Dublin's Aviva Stadium. He will be watching with more than avid interest as Ireland embarks on its "ultimate test", the rugby World Cup. "Believe it or not, we are the only major rugby nation not to have made it past a World Cup quarter-final," he told the Fingal Independent. "I think the players and management are focused on putting that right."
