City Hall party for Ulster legends

Published Monday, 12 December 2011
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Ulster rugby's involvement with the British and Irish Lions will be celebrated at Belfast City Hall in the New Year.

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A reunion of Ulster's 22 surviving Lions will be taking place in February, prior to the start of the 2012 RBS Six Nations.

The legends who have donned the famous red jersey range from Jack Kyle of the 1950 tour all the way through to Stephen Ferris of the 2009 tour.

They will attend a special gala dinner at City Hall, organised by Ballymena RFC, which will see the great and the good of Ulster rugby gather together to celebrate the achievement of Ulster's Lions contingent.

"It's the Ballymena 125th anniversary and normally in years gone by we'd have probably had a game but you can't get players today to have that sort of game," said 1968 British & Irish Lion Syd Millar.

"So what we decided to do was honour the Lions of Ulster, there's 22 who are alive and have a dinner in the City Hall which they kindly gave us for the occasion and also raise some money for the Irish Rugby Union charitable trust."

Jack Kyle, 1950 tourist, said: "I think this is one of those lovely things for those of us who were fortunate to play at a certain level in rugby.

"Meeting all the other people and of course old men have quite long memories at times so we like to reminisce about different tours, different games and so on and that is part of the pleasure of sitting down at a table.

"When we get well into our 80s as I am it's great to still enjoy life and get out and talk to these people."

Tickets for the gala dinner can be purchased from the Ballymena RFC website, with the proceeds to be split between Ballymena RFC's Youth Development Programme and the IRFU Charitable Trust.

© UTV News
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MICHAEL LAW
This past weekend was a massive one in both rugby and in football as both Leinster and Chelsea became European Champions.
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