Foley ‘had a big influence on matches’
When Anthony Foley described rugby as ‘‘a street fight with a ball’’, he was thinking not of the twinkle-toed winger or side-stepping outside centre but of the redoubtable forwards. And as Ireland’s most capped No 8 he knew whereof he spoke.
The quickest way to score a try, he opined, was to take the shortest route: ‘‘Straight over a fella. Sometimes you need to run at people rather than around them – you need to put a bit of manners on them.’’
It sounded as if, in Foley’s coaching manual, rugby should be stripped back to its 19th-century brawling basics. Yet he excelled at the modern form of the game and, paradoxically, given his somewhat thuggish reputation, he was regarded as a strangely subtle player.
On the touchline, meanwhile, as a European Cup winning head coach for Munster, he knew how to inspire creativity in others, and not always through his edgy oneliners. ‘‘Anthony is the smartest person I have ever played with or against,’’ said Keith Wood, who captained Ireland and was a friend from boyhood.
‘‘No-one maximised his talent more fully. He rarely had to think about what to do; he just knew what to do.’’
Such expertise enabled Foley to win 62 caps for Ireland over a decade-long international career, then a record for a No 8. He scored five tries for Ireland, one of them on his debut in 1995, and captained the side on three occasions.
Never the most athletic member of the scrum, his qualities were not always appreciated by the national coaches and, over the following years, he was in and out of the team. ‘‘Anthony had a big influence on matches that was not always seen,’’ said David Hands, the former rugby correspondent of The Times.
A stubborn and understated back row forward, he always looked likely to have a promising future as a coach. Representing Munster, for whom he had been head coach since 2014 – having been forwards’ coach since 2011 – suited him ideally, in that rugby was essential to the way of life in the area.
Foley, who came from a rugby family, may have extolled the more elemental approach to the game in terms of going for the try line, but he was not steeped in its tradition of carousing.
‘‘Anthony was not a big drinker. He was very serious and quite private. He did, though, have old-style values when parties were taking place. If that included having a few pints and a sing-song, then so be it,’’ said Barry Coughlan, a friend and rugby writer in Cork. ‘‘He could be great fun.’’
His sense of fun did once land him in trouble.
As a young player at the 1995 World Cup, he decided to go out on the town with some team-mates. They returned to their Holiday Inn in Johannesburg at the witching hour. Paul Wallace, a particular friend, made it to the sanctuary of his room, but Foley was in the taxi behind him and was caught. The next morning he was brought into the manager’s room and told to apologise to Wallace for coming in so late and waking him up.
Foley was born in Limerick in 1973 and raised in the city. He was educated at St Munchin’s school, a well-known hotbed of rugby talent. The son of an Irish international, Anthony Gerard Foley was expected to play rugby.
Indeed, he was considered Shannon’s lucky mascot when he entered their dressing-room before matches in which his father, Brendan, was playing, carrying his bag and keeping protective watch over his place.
Foley developed physically earlier than most teenagers and became a professional rugby player in his twenties. As an amateur with Shannon in his youth, he was a five-times winner of the All Ireland league. He was to go on to play 201 times for Munster, becoming the team’s most capped player as well as its highest scoring forward with 39 tries.
When the European (Heineken) Cup began in 1995, Munster were considered an irrelevance.
They lacked consistency – and yet a team in Foley’s own image was gradually created.
They reached the final in 2000 and 2002, losing both times, but in the 2006 final he captained the team to victory against the French club Biarritz in Cardiff – a feat comparable with Munster’s defeat of the mighty All Blacks 28 years earlier, a match in which his father Brendan played and which entered Irish sporting folklore.
The 23 tries Foley scored in the Heineken Cup were more than any other forward had achieved in the competition. He even won for himself Domino’s pizza for life in Limerick when he scored a hattrick of tries in another triumph over Biarritz. All too aware of the offer to any player who achieved this in the fixture, he spent rather more time on the wing than was customary for a player in his position.
Known as ‘‘Axel’’ after Eddie Murphy’s character Axel Foley in the film Beverly Hills Cop, he is survived by his wife, Olive, and two young sons, Tony and Dan.
He had no history of ill health but died of a suspected heart attack in the team hotel room in Paris on the eve of Munster’s match against Racing 92. The game was postponed as a mark of respect.
Eddie O’Sullivan, the former Ireland head coach, said that Foley was expected to follow him into the Ireland head coaching job in due course.
‘‘If I am going to be remembered I’d like to be seen as a stubborn player, somebody who wouldn’t give in,’’ Foley once mused.
‘‘There were times during my career when I could have called it quits and gone off and done other things – but there was always a goal there, always something to achieve. Once there’s something to chase, I’ll chase it.’’
The Times, LONDON