Richard Culhane’s graduation party at once became legendary. But Richard shrugged in irritation whenever it was mentioned. He didn’t want to talk about it. It had become a private matter, something to be kept between Richard and his parents and God.

Conor Harris was at the graduation party too, of course. He was going out with Naomi Frears at the time. They were very much in love.

I hope I die before I get old.

7

They both played rugby but Richard was better. Conor was smaller and thinner than Richard, but he could run faster. Richard didn’t need to be a runner. His size did most of the work for him. Conor played scrum half and Richard played fly half.

Richard wasn’t short and squat like his father, and from a distance he didn’t even look that powerful. But he had a tall, rangy athleticism that gave his every movement a kind of casual grace. And up close he was heavy and lithe.

He was comfortable with his own body, and it was this, I think, that fooled people into thinking his confidence was effortless.

‘Christ,’ Father Connelly said, the first time Richard walked out with the Brookfield Senior Cup team. ‘That boy’s built like a brick shithouse.’

Father Connelly was popular among the boys because of his foul mouth. But they took him seriously as a confessor, as a priest. He was one of the first people Richard, Stephen and Barry turned to on the morning they heard that Conor was dead.

I was there, too, the first time Richard walked out with the Senior Cup team. We all were. For that afternoon Richard Culhane was a hero to us. We wanted to be there beside him, every time he scored a point or made the conversion. There was a wistfulness about Richard, a glow of celebrity. He looked important. And he was important: important to us, and to the older men who loved the game and who wanted us to love it, too. If Richard could succeed, we thought but could not articulate, then we could all succeed, somehow. His talent made all of us feel more capable, more true.

Conor walked out with the Senior Cup team, too. I spotted him, head down, as he hustled from the dressing room. There was a frown of concentration on his face. But the photo that appeared in the next day’s Irish Times was of Richard. The accompanying article said Richard’s was ‘the most promising debut in schools rugby in twenty-five years’.

Pat Kilroy, the principal of Brookfield, had this article framed and hung outside his office door.

And although it was Conor who scored the last try in the Senior Cup final that season, securing the match for Brookfield, it was Richard who made the conversion and was hoisted aloft and borne into the stands and sprayed with sparkling wine. It was Richard’s face that we saw on the JumboTron screen, his hair soaked and a wide and slightly superior grin on his face.