"I have known Keith Wood for nearly 30 years and so it's easy to talk about life and death long before we move on to rugby. But the game always provides context and, last Friday afternoon, the 54-year-old former Lions hooker and Irish captain drove to Cork to watch his youngest son, Tom, play for Ireland against Italy in the Under-20 Six Nations. The previous weekend Tom made his first-team debut for Munster to match his dad and the grandfather he never met."
"I look back and don't get maudlin at all. There were still some amazing things even though I missed the funeral and I missed the birth. Alexander was born at Chelsea & Westminster hospital and they'd been prompted that my brother had just died. When I walked into the atrium an orchestra was practising [Mozart's] The Magic Flute. So that's the music in my memory of that extraordinarily stressful time."
Keith Wood traveled to Cork to watch his youngest son, Tom, play for Ireland Under-20 after Tom's Munster debut matched both his father and grandfather. Grandfather Gordon Wood died aged 50 in 1982; Keith was ten then and later played for Munster, Ireland and the Lions. Keith has three rugby-playing sons: Tom, Alexander and Gordon. His brother Gordon died of a heart attack in September 2002, two days before Alexander's birth, and their mother died about three months later. Keith missed the funeral and the birth but remembers Mozart's Magic Flute and expresses acceptance rather than maudlin regret, feeling happiness for his son's achievement without tying it to pride.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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