The most famous hyphen in the game

PHIL HORROCKS-TAYLOR upheld the finest tradition of the double-barrelled international, a distinguished list featuring such venerated Lions as the Scotland captain David BedellSivright, a surgeon killed in action at Gallipoli in 1915, and England’s Dr Ronald Cove-Smith who led the Lions nine years later.

A Yorkshireman from Halifax who died last week aged 86, Horrocks-Taylor made the Lions team for one Test in New Zealand in 1959 when another English stand-off, Bev Risman, played in the other three. Six decades later, HorrocksTaylor owed his enduring fame to the other fly-half on that tour, Mick English.

Few did a sharper line in self-deprecating humour than the Munster man from Limerick. Asked to explain how he allowed his opposite number to nip over for a try during an Irish Wolfhounds’ match in his home-town, English said: “Well, Horrocks went one way, Taylor the other and I was left with the hyphen.”

English had the distinction of being good enough to persuade the selectors to drop Jackie Kyle and pick him instead. No sooner had one great Irish fly-half retired than another, Mike Gibson, appeared, a misfortune which would have heightened the English sense of humour.

In his book, The Giants of Rugby, John Scally publishes a letter sent to English by Mai Purcell of The Limerick Leader on his selection for Ireland against Wales in March, 1958:

“Mick, I should like to impress on you that I’m spending a whole week’s wages to visit Dublin just to see you play and I beseech you not to make an idiot of yourself on this occasion.

“I furthermore request that mindful of your duties and responsibilities to your club and the people of Limerick but to your country as a whole, that you keep your bloody eye on the ball. Good luck and God bless.”

English did as he was told and kept his place for four years, long enough to ensure Horrocks-Taylor a name-check at dinners all over the rugby planet. English died in 2010 aged 76.