Brendan Mullin (61), who has been sentenced to three years in prison for stealing over €500,000 from Bank of Ireland, was one of the last great Irish players of rugby’s amateur era.
Born in Jerusalem, he was educated at Blackrock College, Dublin, which he captained to a Schools Senior Cup success, scoring a hat-trick of tries in the final against King’s Hospital. He was also twice the senior boys All Ireland 110m hurdles champion (1980-1981).
Mullin studied Law at Trinity College Dublin and represented the university at rugby. He also played club rugby with Blackrock College and London Irish. Mullin then headed for Oxford University, where he won a “Blue” playing in the annual Varsity match against Cambridge. Having represented Leinster and Ireland at schools’ level, he graduated to the senior ranks for province and country.
He made his Ireland debut against the Grand Slam-winning Australia side in November 1984, a losing start as the home side went down 16-9, but there was better fortune around the corner as he was part of Mick Doyle’s Triple Crown and championship winning side (1985) in his rookie Test season. Mullin scored his first Irish try in that campaign, where he blocked down England fullback Chris Martin’s kick and regathered to dot down.
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An elegant centre with blistering pace and an underappreciated kicking game, he played alongside some very talented three-quarters in Irish backlines such as Simon Geoghegan, Dave Curtis, Jim Staples, Michael Kiernan, Keith Crossan, Trevor Ringland and Hugo MacNeill.
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A member of the Ireland squad for the first-ever World Cup in 1987, Mullin was subsequently selected for the 1989 British & Irish Lions tour to Australia under head coach Ian McGeechan, one of four Irish players in the original touring party, alongside Paul Dean, Steve Smith and Donal Lenihan, and played well enough to win a place in the first Test against the Wallabies, playing alongside Mike Hall (Wales).
Mullin broke George Stephenson’s 62-year-old record as Ireland’s leading try scorer when he crossed for his 15th in a 28-25 defeat to Scotland at Murrayfield in March 1991
The Lions were thrashed 30-12, and among the changes for the final two Tests, both of which the Lions won to claim the series 2-1, was a new centre partnership of Scott Hastings and Jerry Guscott. Mullin did play another Test for the Lions, against France later that year, to celebrate the bicentenary of the French Revolution.
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He broke George Stephenson’s 62-year-old record as Ireland’s leading try scorer when he crossed for his 15th in a 28-25 defeat to Scotland at Murrayfield in March 1991, and later that year was part of the Ireland team that suffered a narrow World Cup quarter-final defeat at Lansdowne Road to the eventual champions, Australia.
By the time he retired from rugby – he came back to play in the 1995 World Cup in South Africa, having been out of international rugby for two years, and retired for good after the quarter-final defeat to France, the last of his 55 Irish caps – Mullin had added another two tries to push the new Irish record to 17, a milestone that he retained for a dozen years until broken by Brian O’Driscoll.
The former Ireland captain eclipsed the mark when he scored his 18th Irish try against Italy in Rome (2003) on his 35th cap, 20 fewer than it took Mullin, who sent O’Driscoll a congratulatory note and a signed jersey from that final cap against France in the 1995 World Cup.
He said in a subsequent interview when asked about losing the record to O’Driscoll: “No regrets at all. It’s a milestone. It was something I was very proud to hold on to for a while, but it’s something to be broken. Many more players will break that milestone and that’s good for Irish rugby, while Brian will go on to score many more tries.”
Mullin was charged in 2021 in relation to thefts during his time as managing director of Bank of Ireland Private Bank. The defence said publicity around his arrest caused him significant distress and argued Mullin should receive a “substantial discount” due to the delay in bringing him to court.
Judge Martin Nolan noted no motive had come to light for the thefts, but that Mullin was “obviously somewhat desperate for funds”. The judge said the offences warranted a six-year sentence which he reduced to three years after taking the mitigating factors into consideration.
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