Rugby legend, as he says he is now called, Willie John McBride was the surprise guest speaker at the prestigious annual dinner of the Law Society in Blackhall Place on Friday of last week. He is an old playing colleague of the President, Anthony Ensor who has 22 Irish caps. As usual the gathering was full of high-profile legal eagles but as it was the start of the St Patrick's week holiday for Leinster House, many people were away. The Minister they had expected, Dermot Ahern, a solicitor himself, pulled out to represent the Government in South Africa at the St Patrick's celebrations; Attorney General Michael McDowell was on similiar duties in New Zealand and the new Chief Justice, Ronan Keane, was away on legal business.
Judicial guests included the now famous Michael Moriarty and Mella Carroll, Ricky Johnston and Paul Car- ney from the High Court, as well as Cyril Kelly. Frank O'Donnell and Pat McCartan from the Circuit, Clare Leon- ard and new judge David Maughan from the District and SCs Liam McKechnie and Denis McCullough, chair and vice-chairman of the Bar Council. The society's director general, Ken Murphy, had Labour leader Ruairi Quinn and FG's Alan Shatter at his table. Also there were US ambassador Mike Sullivan and deputy Tom Enright, both lawyers, Carmel Foley, Director of Consumer Affairs, and Olive Braiden of the Rape Crisis Centre.
McBride had a lot of old rugby yarns to tell and talked of how much the game had changed since his day, when the captain did everything and a coach was something that took you to the match. Today it was about profit and money; they had diet sheets and psychologists and they trained all week.
"If we had done that in my day, we would have been exhausted; rest was more important. They changed people when someone died . . . Those were the days. You had to stay on the field unless you were dead and a dead body was better than nobody."