Rugby

Wonderful accounts of two Ulster sporting greats: Willie Anderson and Joey Dunlop

Willie Anderson in action for Ireland against Tonga at the 1987 World Cup.
Willie Anderson in action for Ireland against Tonga at the 1987 World Cup. Willie Anderson in action for Ireland against Tonga at the 1987 World Cup.

Crossing the Line: The Flag, the Haka and Facing My Life (by Willie Anderson with Brendan Fanning, Reach Sport, 307pp, £20)

The first two parts of this autobiography's sub-title sum up what rugby legend Willie Anderson is famous/ infamous for in the wider world - getting into bother/ into prison in Argentina in 1980, and standing up to New Zealand's All Blacks as Ireland captain.

The third aspect, 'Facing My Life', is the really revealing stuff, making for a riveting read due to a combination of the big man's openness and experienced rugby scribe Brendan Fanning's skill as ghost writer.

The introduction sums up Willie's priorities in life: pride in his children, Thomas, Jonathan, and Chloe, and their achievements. There's also the bitter regret about accidentally knocking down and killing a neighbour's 11-year-old son. Honesty about his depression too.

And humour. The concluding line is of that chapter: "I was never a great man for the straight and narrow." More of that later.

Born in 1955, from Sixmilecross in the heart of Tyrone, the heart of Ulster, Anderson was the son of a 'B' Special; he lists the friends and neighbours killed by the IRA, while noting the strangeness of one half of a 'community' policing the other half. He courted a Catholic girl until his mother passed on his father's instruction to end the relationship, explaining: "He's afraid you'll be shot. By one side or the other."

Conflict was everywhere, in life and in sport. As Willie recalls, "Rugby when I was growing up was always a fight, a confrontation."

He was well able for that, his giant frame making him an Ulster player; then he was invited to tour Argentina in 1980 with an outfit called the Penguins.

Stealing an Argentinian flag was a student lark, not a political gesture, yet Anderson was told by a British diplomat that some in authority, the notorious Junta generals, were talking about execution, or 10 years' hard labour. In the end, he spent more than two weeks in a detention centre and three months under hotel arrest before being allowed home. He's forever grateful to Carlos Guarna, liaison man with the Banco Nacion club there, and to the Dungannon rugby folk who raised money for him.

Facing the All Blacks' haka was a breeze after that.

Wonderful accounts of two Ulster sporting greats: Willie Anderson and Joey Dunlop
Wonderful accounts of two Ulster sporting greats: Willie Anderson and Joey Dunlop

Yet it took until he was 29 before he pulled on an Ireland senior jersey, despite being a key part of the all-conquering Ulster side under Jimmy Davidson which beat Australia and were Inter-pro champs for nine consecutive seasons from the mid-Eighties onwards.

Even then the big country boy needed to get a 'charm' via telephone from a woman in Aughnacloy to settle his nerves before his Irish debut.

Anderson acknowledges all those who helped and guided him along his extraordinary journey, in rugby and in life.

He palled up with Dungannon icon Stewart McKinney, recalling: "If Jimmy D was the straight and narrow then Stew was the sideroads, with a bit of cross country thrown in. He was the wild side…We were a potent combination."

That was on and off the pitch. French flanker Victor Boffelli literally broke one of his shins on McKinney's head.

There are tales aplenty of rugby tours and drinking, great times with the terrific Ireland team of the mid-Eighties, but alcohol overtook him after the tragic death of young Glen McLernon in 1992. Anderson's depression began in Buenos Aires but returned, despite him not being at fault for the accident.

Despite his troubles with alcohol he enjoyed coaching success with Dungannon, Ireland, and… Leinster - having not been asked to get involved at Ravenhill, until his involvement with Ulster's Academy in recent years. He introduced the notorious 'murder ball' training routine to Donnybrook.

And despite his background, he became involved with the GAA. Patsy Forbes gave him a job as a kitchen salesman when he lost a teaching role, and he played alongside Mickey Harte, albeit rugby with Omagh Accies. the start of a long friendship with the future Tyrone manager. He made sure his son Thomas, whose own promising rugby career was curtailed by injury, played GAA with The Loup, where the Andersons have long lived. In latter years he helped out Paddy Tally at St Mary's and Kieran McGeeney when he was with Kildare. Best of all, he drank in the Battery Bar, Ardboe with the late Jim Curran.

Revered around Dungannon Football Club (the proper name of the town's rugby side), Willie Anderson takes great pride in the Red Hand being the symbol of both Tyrone GAA and Ulster Rugby.

He's conversed with all sorts over the years, from Denis Thatcher to Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and struck up a friendship with novelist Gerald Seymour, who provides the foreword.

His greatest respect is for his wife Heather - coming from a great man like Willie Anderson, that's quite the tribute.

This book is a fabulous and fitting account, the story and stories of an Ulster and Irish icon.

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Joey Dunlop: The definitive biography of the greatest road racer (by Stuart Barker, John Blake/ Bonnier Books, 360pp, £14.99 paperback, £20 hardback)

Joey Dunlop was quick from the outset, emerging at home in 1952 before the midwife arrived. Born in the townland of Unshinagh, 'the place of ash trees', in another lifetime he might have been a hurler, but instead he became a motorcycling legend.

Called William Joseph after his father, a motor mechanic known as 'Wullie', it was fitting that he made his own name - throughout motorcycling, people know who 'Joey' was.

The fame of 'The King of the Roads' extended far beyond his sport, though. When his untimely death in Estonia, at the age of just 48, was announced at Casement Park on July 2, 2000, there was an audible gasp from the stunned crowd.

Joey Dunlop's popularity crossed all divides in Northern Ireland, and not just because of his successes, astonishing though they were. Twenty-six victories in the TT races on the Isle of Man, 24 Ulster Grands Prix, 13 wins at the North-West 200, 10 podium finishes in the Formula TT World Championship (including five consecutive triumphs)… The list goes on. And on. His career record, compiled by Ivan Davidson of the MCUI, runs to 35 pages - and it doesn't claim to be complete.

Many of those wins came after he battled back from what many perceived to be career-ending injuries in 1989. Four years earlier he had survived a shipwreck.

Joey Dunlop was a remarkable racer and also a lovely man. His quiet, unassuming nature endeared him to all who knew him or were aware of him at all.

It's 20 years since his last biography was published and author Stuart Barker has the depth of knowledge to do a great job, having written extensively on the sport and penned books on Valentino Rossi, Barry Sheene, Evel Knievel, and David Jefferies, as well as ghosting the stories of Steve Hislop and Niall McKenzie.

With a foreword by Carl Fogarty, Barker's latest work is a worthy tribute to Joey Dunlop, packed with information and personal reminiscences from his friends and rivals (usually one and the same).