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A
VERY
PECULIAR
SENDING
OFF
LAUGHARNE,
JANUARY 1988
Gerry
‘Ginger’ McLoughlin was a bulwark of the Ireland pack that won the
Triple Crown and Championship in 1982. A man of tremendous strength, he
provided the abiding memory of the famous win at Twickenham that year
when, early in the second half, he led a raid for the corner from a maul
in the English 22 and finished off scoring the only try of his Test career
to set Ireland on course for a 16—15 victory.
He
was a typical son of Munster, hailing from Limerick, and his shock of red
hair made him stand out in even the most protracted scrum or maul. Never
one to start trouble, he would be the first to admit that he was never an
angel on the rugby pitch. Certainly he was well able to mix it with the
best of them during a successful playing career that culminated in a Lions
tour to New Zealand in 1983.
Long
after his international career was over he took up a position as bar
steward at the Gilfacli Goch rugby club in Wales and frequently turned out
for the first XV. He was a part of the side that enjoyed a run to the
fourth round of the WRU Challenge Cup in 1988.
In
the third round match of that campaign at Laughame, he was involved in a
very peculiar incident. An argy-bargy involving some of the front-row
forwards at a lineout attracted the attention of Roy Rees, the referee.
Ginger, never one to argue with authority but perhaps revealing his guilty
conscience, heard the referee’s comments and trudged quietly off the
pitch to his early shower and thought nothing more about the incident.
Some
15 minutes or so later Mr Rees realised that Gilfach were a man short when
a scrum went down minus a tight-head prop. It then dawned on everyone that
Ginger had thought that he had been sent off and had left the field.
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Apparently,
when he lectured the players for that bit of nonsense at the lineout Mr
Rees had said sternly: ‘Push off and let’s get on with the game.
Ginger literally took ‘push off to be his marching orders.
Gilfach’s
14 men won through all the same
beating
Laugharne 28—19.
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