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Passion for rugby shaped career of former Irish Times journalist but he also covered golf, had a love of hurling and was a lifelong Arsenal fan
Passion for rugby shaped career of former Irish Times journalist but he also covered golf, had a love of hurling and was a lifelong Arsenal fan Irish Times rugby correspondent Edmund van Esbeck.
His distinctive style of writing was underpinned by discipline, diligence and knowledge of the game. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho, the youngest of seven children to Louis and Mary Josephine and spent the first two-and-a-half years of his life in the Waterford seaside town. He had three sisters, Constance, Eileen and Bridget, and three brothers, Phillip, Frank and Danny who died in childhood from scarlet fever.
There is conjecture as to exactly where the family name originated but the agreed narrative is that his antecedents came from “the Dutch-Belgian border”. Ned was inadvertently responsible for a change in the spelling of his family name from van Eesbeck to van Esbeck. The person who hand wrote his details on his birth certificate dropped an “e” So when it came time to get a passport, he had to keep the spelling van Esbeck.
This contrasted with his brother Frank, also a journalist with The Irish Times and later the Irish Press, who spelt his name, van Eesbeck. Free education was a gamble that is still paying off The family moved from Tramore to Sunday’s Well in Cork and then to Douglas.
Ned was initially educated by the nuns at St Aloysius’ up until his Communion, after which he attended Presentation Brothers College, Cork, going through its doors for the first time in September 1940. He enjoyed his schooldays, showing a particular affinity for history, geography, English, Latin and sport.
While his passion for rugby would predominantly shape his professional career, he also covered golf for a time and had a love for hurling – he won a juvenile medal with Blackrock in 1948 – and soccer. Truthfully, all sports.
He could rattle off the names of the legendary Cork hurling teams of the early 1940s but, as he said in a podcast several years ago, if he could be granted one sporting wish it would be to see Waterford win another All-Ireland hurling title before he died. Just to put this in context, this from a man whose house in Churchtown was called Highbury in homage to his beloved Arsenal.
Injury denied him an opportunity to play senior cup team rugby at Pres. The death of his father, Louis, from pneumonia at age 55, while Ned was in the latter years of secondary school, was a huge blow for the family, emotionally and financially. Frank, in second-year medicine at UCC – he was honorary secretary of the rugby club – had to drop out of college because the family did not have the funds to support his studies.
Ned took the well-travelled path to London – the antidote to the rife unemployment in late-1950s Ireland − and got a job in journalism at the Exchange Telegraph in Fleet Street, or Extel as it was known, a rival to the Press Association. He covered soccer primarily including the 1966 World Cup final and several FA Cup finals and when clearing out the attic his son Declan came across one of his father’s old address books that contained the phone numbers of England manager Alf Ramsay and players like Bobby and Jack Charlton, Bobby Moore, Jimmy Greaves and Roger Hunt.
He was very good friends with Brian Moore, the ITV soccer commentator and host of The Big Match. London also provided him with an even greater love than Arsenal as it was there that he met Mary Treacy, at a Legion of Mary event, whom he subsequently married. The couple later welcomed three children, Declan, Mary Katherine and Geraldine. Ned was teetotal and had a deep Catholic faith.
It wasn’t unusual for him to inveigle a colleague or two to attend Sunday Mass on rugby tours. He was rarely seen without his pipe – he only gave it up aged 89 after a bout of pneumonia – or a cup of tea.
He took over the rugby position at Extel after the previous incumbent moved into the sports editor’s role, but it was a call from his brother Frank, to whom he was very close, that proved pivotal to his career. Frank informed his younger brother that The Irish Times was looking for a number two to Paul McWeeney, the rugby and golf correspondent. He got the job and eventually succeeded McWeeney, writing on both disciplines initially before concentrating on rugby.
He retained that role until his retirement in 1997 but continued to write a rugby column for several years thereafter. His distinctive style of writing was underpinned by discipline, diligence and an encyclopedic rugby knowledge to sit alongside a contacts book that was the envy of his rivals. He lived those qualities.
“I never went to bed without writing my report, so I wouldn’t be influenced by anything else,” his reference to covering a Saturday game with a Monday publication date. Often seen as an establishment figure, a gatekeeper, it didn’t preclude him from being critical of the IRFU on occasion. No one broke more exclusive stories. He was proud of rugby’s inclusivity and 32 county sport status during the Troubles, that aligned Catholic and Protestant for an afternoon in Lansdowne Road.
He wrote: “Rugby is the only game where you will have the hard-case unionist, maybe from the Shankill, coming down to Lansdowne Road and roaring on the team shoulder to shoulder with the most rabid nationalist. ” He lamented the change in the sport from amateur to professional in 1995.
A huge advocate for schools rugby, he covered hundreds of matches including provincial finals, his words and thoughts cut out and plastered over school notice boards the length and breadth of the country. He covered 18 overseas tours with Ireland and the Lions, seeing Ireland win both Tests in Australia in 1979, the Lions triumph in South Africa in 1974 and 1997.
His favourite rugby memory was Ireland’s 2009 Grand Slam, Ronan O’Gara’s drop goal for a team coached by Declan Kidney: two Pres old boys. He named Jack Kyle as the best Irish player. Munster’s triumph over the All Blacks in 1978 was another cherished memory. Among his Arsenal heroes were Joe Mercer, Liam Brady, Dennis Bergkamp, Tony Adams and Arsene Wenger.
His season ticket for the Gunners has been passed down through the generations. He had a love of American sport, especially baseball and the LA Dodgers, fostered by taking regular holidays in Manhattan Beach, California, to where his children will return in his honour. He is survived by his wife of 65 years Mary, his children Declan, Mary Katherine and Geraldine, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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