Sometimes There's a Man...

The first time I witnessed the force of nature that was Gary Halpin was on a bus trip back to Kilkenny Rugby Club, having played in a minis blitz at Carlow RFC. I’m guessing the year was 1979 or 1980, and I was playing for the Kilkenny U12s who were coached, as it happened, by Gary’s late father, Tom Halpin. Gary, who was almost four years older than me, was perched in the back row of the bus holding court. Singing songs and telling jokes. Making people laugh and making people feel good. The boy was barely a teenager and he was already larger than life.

 We grew up knocking around the same Kilkenny town where it was impossible not to know who Gary Halpin was. Such was the effect he had on the people around him. We both boarded at Rockwell College, and although Gary was two years ahead of me, his presence was everywhere. The main hall. The locker rooms. The ref hall. And of course the sports grounds. Who could ever forget his exasperate cries on a summer evening as he flung a six kilogram ball of iron into a battered tree trunk (I think it was an oak) that stood some 50 meters upfield from the hammer circle?

 Several years later our paths crossed in a more significant way on the 1994 Ireland Rugby Tour of Australia where, thanks to the simple fact that our names fell consecutively on an alphabetical team sheet, we became frequent roommates. A host of rugby tours and training camps followed through the 90s: the World Cup in South Africa in 1995, New Zealand and Samoa in 1997, and of course three seasons playing together at London Irish.  

 Yet despite being a friendship that primarily revolved around our involvement in rugby, this is not what I will remember most about Gary. Off the pitch we rarely talked about it. Instead we obsessed over other passions. Food. Music. Playing the guitar. And perhaps most of all, cinema. Scorcese. Tarantino. Francis Ford Coppola. Pulp Fiction, Scarface, Goodfellas, Apocalypse Now. These works were not just films to be enjoyed, they were masterpieces to be consumed over and over during the downtime between training sessions and matches. Memorised. Analysed. Re-enacted (mostly by Gary). Of particular interest was anything by the Coen Brothers. Raising Arizona. Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Fargo. There is something about how their work combines humour with weighty themes that Gary found irresistible.

 I don’t know how many times we have watched The Big Lebowski between us, but I’m guessing it’s upwards of a hundred. And I don’t know how many hours we spent talking about it. Referencing it. Laughing about it. It’s not an obsession that’s easy to explain, but it is something I will miss. I will miss getting a late-night text from Gary because he has just spotted some obscure but brilliant detail in the bowling alley scene when Walter, Donny and The Dude are confronted by Jesus. He had a great mind for it. He had a great mind for a great many things. An athlete. A teacher. A stand-up comedian. A human being. But of all the roles that Gary played, it was his role as a husband and father that he excelled at the most. Ultimately he was a Family Guy (another of his favourite shows). He was acutely aware of what was most important to him and he wasn’t afraid to grab it with both hands. Though it may be of small comfort to them right now, in many ways his three children are the luckiest kids alive – because they had Gary Halpin as a father.

His untimely departure only highlights how fickle time can be. It’s hardly a measure of a person’s life, is it? Gary could light up your life in 30 seconds flat. He could live more in a minute than most of us live in a week. And he carried the good times with him wherever he went. As ex-Leinster Captain Liam Toland said to me on the morning we got the sad news, “Whenever Gary appeared I knew that the next hour or two were going to be memorable.” John Riordan, a classmate and lifelong friend of Gary hit the nail on the head when he said, “The part that people remembered about Gary was how he made them feel”. Gary himself said as much in a London Irish Interview back in 2006: “I remember the friendships more than the games,” he said, “and to be honest that is more important”.

 I myself am at a loss for words such as these. So please bear with me as I paraphrase a snippet of monologue from Lebowski, courtesy of Joel and Ethan Coen. I don’t think Gary would object, though he would probably have something to say about it. 

“Sometimes there’s a man – I won’t say a hero because what’s a hero? But sometimes there’s a man – and I’m talking about Gary Halpin here – well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.”

Take it easy, my friend. I know that you will. Catch you later on down the trail…

Fulch, February 2021