As befits a flying wing and one of the world's leading businessmen, Tony O'Reilly has always been a man in a hurry.

As a teenager, it took him only five senior club appearances to play his way into the Ireland team. Four internationals later, he was a Lion. On that first tour, to South Africa in 1955, he broke the tourists' all-time try-scoring record soon after his 19 th birthday.

Four years later, this time with the Lions in New Zealand, he destroyed his own mark to set a total that still stands and is unlikely ever to be beaten.

At 6'2" tall, weighing almost 15 stone and with flaming red hair, O'Reilly always stood out from the crowd and in South Africa received the sort of pop star treatment Barry John would encounter in New Zealand in 1971.

O'Reilly could not quite class himself as a pop star when he toured New Zealand in 1959; the closest he came was when he and his comedic partner in crime, Andy Mulligan, were caught moonlighting as the house band at an Auckland restaurant called the Hi-Diddle-Griddle two evenings before the final Test.

South Africa made O'Reilly's reputation as his pace, power, deceiving body swerve and jolting hand-off helped him to 16 tries in 15 matches, including two in the Tests.

New Zealand in 1959 saw the maturing of his talent as he ran in 22 tries in 24 matches, this time grabbing four in Tests - one in each international against Australia and a further two in the series against the All Blacks.

Of those 22, 18 came in New Zealand, another record for a Lions tourist in that country, as O'Reilly pipped Peter Jackson - who finished on 17 - to break the previous best, set by Ken Jones in 1950.

O'Reilly summed up his Lions love affair thus: "I loved the freedom that I didn't get with Ireland, the thrill of receiving the ball 10 or 15 times in a game.

"The Lions played running rugby, and I was a runner."