Ireland's Rugby Giants: Phil Orr

He made forty-nine consecutive appearances from his first international against France until the Five Nations game with Wales a decade later in 1986. One more appearance would have allowed him to equal Sandy Carmichael’s record for Scotland but it was not to be. He was recalled later that year and played on to win another nine caps.

“I’d be lying to say I wasn’t disappointed at being dropped,” admits Orr. “But it just made me all the more determined to get back into the side.” He achieved that and went on to play in the 1987 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

The morning of the Welsh game he had played for his club Old Wesley before going to the game with some of his colleagues. They teased him mercilessly as they approached Lansdowne Road asking if he knew how to get there without the team bus.

That was an unhappy time for Orr, who with fifty-eight caps by the time he finished playing, became the most capped Ireland prop up until that point. He has many great memories and stories about his time with Ireland. One that always stays with him involved Willie Duggan who arrived for training from Kilkenny and was told to warm up. “I’m grand,” said Willie. “There’s a great heater in the car.”

From a playing point of view Orr’s greatest period with Ireland came in the early to mid-Eighties when he was part of two Triple Crown triumphs. For the first he was partnered in the front row by Ciaran Fitzgerald and Ginger McLoughlin with Jimmy McCoy coming in for the boul’ Ginger in 1985.

One of his proudest moments in a green jersey came when he was recalled to the side for the final Five Nations game of the season against Scotland in Dublin. It was the St Patrick’s weekend and having explained to his Old Wesley mates that he would be once more travelling to Lansdowne Road in the team coach, he prepared to win his fiftieth cap.

What he was not quite so prepared for was the decision that he should lead out the team. He did so brimming with pride with the one low point of the afternoon being a 10-9 defeat by the Scots.

Afterwards back at the Shelbourne there was another shock in store. His Ireland team mates had organised a singing telegram to celebrate his half century of international caps. It is a tribute to Orr and a mark of the respect and affection he had for his fellow players that the lyrics of the song, especially composed to commemorate his fifty caps, survived the party. They now sit proudly in a frame on the wall of Phil’s home.

From the Appletree Press title
Ireland’s Rugby Giants by Ivan Martin