Ken Kennedy, rugby player who was one of the 1974 Lions ‘Invincibles’ – obituary

Ken Kennedy, who has died aged 81, was an orthopaedic consultant and former British and Irish Lions hooker who won 45 caps for Ireland in the days before professional rugby; he was one of the celebrated Lions “Invincibles” of 1974 who had such an emphatic series victory against South Africa. 

He was also on the 1966 Lions tour of New Zealand and Australia, and when he retired from the international scene in 1975 he held the world record, 45, for caps won by a hooker.

A very modern kind of hooker – mobile, adept with the ball and with sound positional sense – he could have played rugby for England, but chose Ireland, where both his parents had been born and where he was brought up. Kenneth William Kennedy was born in Rochester, Kent, on May 10 1941, near the naval base in Chatham, where his father, Surgeon Lieutenant Commander Ken Kennedy, was based with his wife Connie.

Ken had two sisters, and grew up in Holywood, Northern Ireland – later the birthplace of another great Irish sportsman, the golfer Rory McIlroy – where Dr Kennedy became a popular GP after the war. Ken attended Campbell College before studying Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast.

After graduating, he moved to England, where he worked for the NHS at Guy’s, St Mary Abbot’s and St Stephen’s hospitals before going to work in private practice in Mayfair.

In Belfast he had played rugby for Queen’s and CIYMS, while in London he played his club rugby for London Irish. In January 1965 he made his Test debut for Ireland in the Five Nations Championship in a 3-3 draw against France at Lansdowne Road. The following year he was called up for his first Lions tour, to Australia and New Zealand, where he played in four Tests, scoring a try in the opener, an 11-8