Its pages are full of the city’s streets, pubs, restaurants, public buildings, churches, houses and characters. Yet, of all the names of places and people, there is only one rugby club - Bective Rangers.

Indeed, not only is the club mentioned in Ulysses, it also finds its way into Joyce’s other works, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and even Finnegans Wake! Joyce was born in 1882, one year after the club was founded and although field sports were not his strong point, he would certainly have been aware of the five clubs which existed in the city in his youth - Bective Rangers, Dublin University, Wanderers, Monkstown and Lansdowne. Why then did he choose Bective for immortality?

Bective was the premier club at the time, and among its members were prominent and distinguished men, on and off the field. Among these were Eugene Sheehy and W. G. Fallon, who had been school friends of Joyce at Belvedere College and University, from whom he gathered the material he was later to use in his writing.

Eugene Sheehy.
Eugene Sheehy , who was born in 1881, was one of a family of four girls, and two boys whose father, David was a Nationalist MP and a former Fenian. The family was well-educated and accomplished and was prominent in the thriving political and cultural movements of the early part of the 20th century when the country was in the grip of Nationalistic fervour, as Home Rule was close to becoming a reality. The Sheehys and their educated friend saw themselves as leaders in a new independent Ireland. Three of the girls were married to prominent men of their time; Hannah to Frank Skeffington, a noted pacifist and campaigner for women’s rights; Mary to Tom Kettle MP, Barrister and University Professor and Kathleen to Frank Cruise O’Brien, a prominent journalist and father of Conor, later Government Minister and author. Both Richard and Eugene were barristers. The Sheehy home at 2 Belvedere Place was frequented by friends from school and university every second Sunday, where they indulged in charades and parlour games.
When the Home Rule Bill was finally passed in the House of Commons in 1914, it appeared that the promise of a new beginning for Ireland was at hand. However, the outbreak of World War caused the Bill to be shelved and the cataclysmic events of 1916 ensured that it would never be resurrected.

The war saw Eugene Sheehy and thousands of Irishmen enlist in the British Army. Tom Kettle also joined and while their motives were honourable, they faced the dilemma, in 1916, of seeing their fellow-countrymen executed by the very Army in which they themselves were serving. One of the leaders of the Insurrection, Thomas McDonagh, was a friend of Eugene’s and a fellow academic of Kettles.

Further tragedy was to visit the Sheehy family in 1916 as three of the girls lost their husbands that year; Skeffington was murdered by a deranged British Officer during Easter Week, Kettle died in the Battle of the Somme and Margaret’s husband, Frank succumbed to ill-health. The family’s dream of two years previously were sadly fading as their personal and political landscape changed utterly in the intervening years. Their mother Bessie died in 1917 and the once proud figure of their father David, was crushed by the collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the 1918 election.

Eugene, like many of his contemporaries changed his uniform for that of the Free State Army after the War of Independence. As a trained barrister, he was a Legal Officer and a member of the Military Court that passed the death sentence on Erskine Childers in 1922, another example of the difficult situations men of his generation faced. He resigned in 1924 and later became a Circuit Court judge in the new State, fulfilling in a small way, the ambitions of his once powerful family.

Judge Sheehy, as he became known, had been a contemporary of James Joyce in Belvedere and at University College where they both studied Italian. He was also a member of the University’s Literary and Historical Society and was among a group of students who were active in literary and intellectual circles in Dublin at the turn of the century. He joined Bective on leaving school and no doubt, James Joyce, as was his wont, stored in his teeming brain all the details of the club he learned from Sheehy and which he later used in his books.

Eugene was a staunch member of the club both as a player and administrator. He was President in 1923-24 and remained a dedicated clubman until his death in 1957. In his book, May it Please the Court, he gives an entertaining account of a trip to France with the Bective in 1905. Two of the team were Tom Cullen and Lal Mooney, descendents of whom, Maurice Cullen and Brian Mooney, remain closely associated with the club.

W. G. (Billy) Fallon
Billy Fallon was a distinguished Bective man with an outstanding record in Irish rugby. He was captain of the club in 1907 - 09, Club President 1921 - 22, President of the Leinster Branch 1928- 29 and President of the IRFU 1949 - 50. Like Eugene Sheehy, he was a contemporary of James Joyce in Belvedere and at University and has the distinction of being mentioned in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, though not in a very flattering manner “A boy named Fallon from Belvedere had often asked him with a silly laugh why they moved so often”.

He was also a prominent member of the Irish Parliamentary Party and would have been destined for high office, had events not taken the turn they did. In 1923 when Joyce was a famous author and living in Paris, Fallon visited him on the occasion of the France-Ireland game which Joyce also attended. He called on him on the same occasion in 1931 when he was an Irish selector. Joyce had been at the match and astonished Fallon by rolling off the names of the Irish players and their clubs and also the prominent players of the 1923 side.

Billy Fallon was the first to reveal the many connections between Joyce and Bective in a speech he delivered at the Bective 75th Anniversary dinner in 1956. The Club President that year was one J. C. Arigho, father of our esteemed current President. Billy Fallon was a barrister by profession and through his long life was known and respected by a few generations of Bective men. His many memories of the club are recorded in two articles, which were published in the club’s centenary magazine in 1981. He died in the late 1960s.

Magee
No reference to the early days of Bective could fail to include the Magee name, synonymous with the club from its inception to the present day. While the great Louis (the 1880s version) is not mentioned in Joyce’s work, his brother James is, along with Paddy Rath in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The occasion was February 1891 when a Bective team played against Clongowes where James Joyce was a nine year-old pupil. “It was the night of the match against Bective Rangers”, and the young Joyce was shown “a ball of creamy sweets and the ball was made just like a red and green apple”, the Bective colours at the time, before the white was added. Joyce left Clongowes that year. Paddy Rath and James Magee subsequently played for Bective and James, although he was not capped for Ireland, toured South Africa with the Lions in 1896 with his brother Louis.
Brothels and the Bective Brothers

In Ulysses, the main characters, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus both abhor violence. It is noteworthy therefore, that when Joyce calls up images of men of strength and athleticism he chooses Bective Rangers rugby players!
The quote from Ulysses “tell my brother the Bective rugger fullback on you, heartless flirt” is uttered by a prostitute in Monto, the name given to the brothel area, centered around Montgomery Street, now Foley Street, in the North inner city. It was a thriving red light district at the turn of the 19th century, catering for the large British Garrison as well as native client. The Bective full back of the time was PJ Grant, who also played for Ireland in 1894. Club members of today will no doubt be appalled to learn that relatives of Bective players could have plied such a trade!

Joyce and his friends also frequented Monto, so it may be safe to assume that Bective men made an occasional expedition to “the kips” to seek the favours of May Oblong and Fresh Nellie. The brothels were an accepted part of the city’s social fabric at the time, but not so in the new staunchly Catholic State, which closed them down in 1928.

The fearsome reputation of the Bective men is also found in Finnegans Wake, “And I tell you even the Bectives wouldn’t hold me”.
There is also reference to the “glorious saint Collopys” - two legendary brothers who played for Bective and Ireland in the 1900s. Billy Collopy was capped 19 times from 1914 and Dick 13 times from 1923. Their father, George, who came from Limerick, was capped once in 1891. Joyce had seen the Collopys in action and was impressed enough by their prowess to invoke them as follows:
“By the horn of twenty both of the two Saint Collopys, blackmail him I will.”�

Further proof of the prominence of the club in the early 20th century is the inclusion of eminent Bective members in Ulysses such as Sir Charles Cameron who was President of the club for the decade 1898 - 1908 and Lorcan Sherlock, Lord Mayor of Dublin and Vice-President of Bective. Even the famous landmark in Ulysses, Davy Byrnes pub, has an association with the club as it passed from, Davy Byrne to his nephew Andy Boland, a long-time member of Bective and President in 1950-51.

James Joyce once claimed that if Dublin was to disappear, it could be re-built from the pages of Ulysses. Despite what some of our competitors may believe, Bective Rangers is not about to disappear, but if it ever does, it can be re-built from the pages of English literature’s greatest novel - a claim that is surely unique in the rugby universe.