SAI Annual Members' Luncheon

Hugo MacNeill was Ireland’s first-choice full back for most of the 1980s, missing just six games over an eight-season international career (1981-88). Educated at Blackrock College in Dublin, he captained Ireland four times at Schools’ level in the 1976-77 season and won the first of 37 Irish caps in 1981 while a student at Trinity College. He won three Oxford Blues (1982-83-84) and was a member of the Irish sides that won the Triple Crown in 1982 and again in 1985. A British and Irish Lion in New Zealand in 1983 when he played in 3 of the 4 tests against the All Blacks, he played in all four of Ireland’s matches in the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987, emerging as Ireland’s top try scorer in the campaign. In 1996 Hugo MacNeill and his fellow Irish and Lions player, Trevor Ringland, organised the Peace International between Ireland and the Barbarians at Lansdowne Road to raise funds and awareness of the political situation in Ireland, and, since then, he has been involved with the Ireland Fund, chairing the organisation in 2007. Now a director of investment bankers Goldman Sachs, and based in Dublin, MacNeill, who boasts ancestors from Glenarm in Co. Antrim, has been a regular contributor to BBC Five Live’s international rugby coverage, and was a member of the commentary teams for the 2003 and 2007 World Cups.