A colleague, speaking at the funeral ceremonies, described Professor Tom Reilly as “unique… universally respected and admired… unassuming and unpretentious…an academic giant…warm and intensely caring”, writes Liam Horan.

Because he was based in Liverpool for most of his life, many Irish people may be unaware of the impact he had not just on the lives of those he knew personally, but on the worlds of, Sports Science, Science and Football, and Research Methods. He studied the human body and the stresses affecting it in many sports and was also a recognised expert on jet lag, advising Olympic teams and Premier League clubs on how to overcome its effects when travelling for competitions overseas.

“His intellectual powers knew no boundaries, providing deep insights into the worlds of philosophy, literature, and the use of English language,” continued the colleague.

Yet, for all his undoubted brilliance, Tom Reilly was a man of extraordinary ordinariness. He participated in, and promoted, team games and athletics with a fervour that never relented throughout his 67 years on this earth.

Football in all its forms fascinated him, and three teams claimed his affections: Hollymount, Mayo and Everton FC. Like many of his generation, he lived through grave disappointments following the green and red of Mayo, yet he never lost the faith.

“Virtually every game Mayo played in Croke Park,” recalls his brother Sean, “he would be there. He was very proud of his niece Edel, my daughter, and Noel Connelly, the man from our own village of Lehinch outside Hollymount who captained Mayo in the 1996 and 1997 All-Ireland finals.”

It started in Lehinch. Tom Reilly was born there to Paddy and Josie Reilly. He grew up three sisters (Maureen, Bridie and Evelyn) and brother Sean. In 1964, he played on the Hollymount team that won the Mayo junior football championship, a victory that he cherished as much as the many great victories enjoyed by athletes under his tutelage in later years. In fact, Tom Reilly won county medals in all three sports in which he participated – Gaelic football, handball, and athletics. In 1973, he entered the Guinness Book of Records for a 100-hour non-stop exercise marathon, which formed part of his research into the impact of continuous exercise on the human body.

He lived in Dublin for a period, and studied at night for a B.A. in University College, Dublin. He was an athlete of some distinction himself, and represented the Irish Universities team in the 3,000m at international championships in Belgium, which he won.

Tom gained funding to attend St Mary’s College in Strawberry Hill, where he received a post-graduate teaching certificate in Physical Education. His love of teaching remained throughout his career.  His greatest rewards as an academic came from supporting more than 60 doctoral students, many of whom have taken on senior posts in institutions in the UK, Ireland and further afield.

Tom Reilly’s penchant for the unexpected manifested itself in the late 1960s, when he embarked on a two-year teaching term with the Mill Hill Fathers in the Cameroon, which had recently gained independence. “He wrote a letter home from the Cameroon where he spoke about introducing soccer to the locals in the part of Cameroon where he was based,” recalls brother Sean, “and I’m sure many years later he enjoyed the successes of Cameroon in the World Cup.”

In addition to PE, Tom also taught Latin and English/Irish literature with Yeats featuring heavily in the curriculum.  Years later he recounted his pleasure at hearing the boys of Sasse College reciting ‘My country is Kiltartan Cross…

Academically, Tom was intensely curious about the human body, its potential and the methodology by which its functioning could be improved. Back in London, studied for, and gained, a Masters in Ergonomics. In 1975, he moved to the Liverpool Polytechnic – which became known as the Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) upon receiving university status in 1992 – and it was here that his genius really flourished.

His contribution embodied an incredibly wide range of talents: he had insights into how the human body could work more efficiently in an athletic sense; he was a mentor, a caring confidante, a relentless motivator, an enthusiast, a friend, and a tireless promoter.

“He got inside your head,” is one way Sean summarises his brother.

Indeed, thanks to the intervention of a teacher, the emerging Villierstown brothers John and Ray Treacy corresponded with Tom from their early teens, and he played a significant part in helping to develop their careers as athletes of international renown.

The Poly became known and respected in English athletic circles. But it also achieved a certain prominence in Ireland, due to Tom’s continuing devotion to an event he had helped to establish in the late 1970s: the Hollymount International Road Race, one of the grand old ladies of the Irish road-racing calendar.

“Tom and I set up the Hollymount Road Race in 1966,” explains Sean Reilly, “and Tom remained loyal to that race for the rest of his life. When he lived in Dublin, he brought runners from Phoenix Harriers to Hollymount for the race, and, in later years, he brought dozens and dozens of athletes from Liverpool Poly and LJMU.”

The involvement of Tom’s Liverpool protégés in the race brought the event to a whole new level. It gave the established Irish stars – the John Treacys, the Gerry Kiernans, and the Billy Gallaghers, replete with his trademark green Morris Minor – something extra to aim at each year, and Hollymount became a hugely-respected fixture on the circuit each November, often in scything west of Ireland rain.

The Liverpool supply-line flourished. Tom oversaw the production of countless internationals. The institution became synonymous with athletics. One protégé – John Woods – grew up in the UK, but, on a trip to Hollymount, looked up his Irish ancestors. Something stirred within him, and he declared for Ireland, wearing the green singlet in a whopping eleven World Cross-country Championships.

On the academic front, Tom Reilly’s life was one of enormous contribution. He was the first-ever Professor of Sports Science in the UK, and helped to forge the rich heritage of sport and exercise study at the Poly, LJMU and beyond.

He was invited to present keynote lectures all over the UK and beyond. He was a man of huge influence internationally, and fostered many interactions within elite sport, such as soccer, Gaelic football, and both rugby codes. Indeed, his beloved Hollymount Gaelic football team took part in the first-ever Conference of Science and Football in Liverpool in 1986, playing an exhibition game in Anfield.

As an Everton fan – one who was known to shed a tear during perilous relegation battles – Tom was man enough to oversee the game with customary grace and style. Tom’s allegiance to Everton began when he worked and travelled with the team, using the players as subjects for his PhD study on the stresses affecting the body in professional football.

He was sports science consultant with the British Olympic Association from 1992 to 2002.  He was a former Past President of the World Commission of Science and Sports and was a founder member of the European College of Sport Science.

His professional awards included Fellowship of the Institute of Biology; he is a fellow of the Ergonomics Society and the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences.  He authored or edited 36 books, including co-authorship of ‘Science and Soccer’, first published by E. and F. N. Spon in 1996. The new Life Sciences building at LJMU, due to be opened later this year, will be named in his honour.

So he went to his grave without seeing Mayo bring home the Sam Maguire Cup. Right to the end, despite being troubled by ill-health, he continued to undertake Croke Park pilgrimages.

He was involved in a consultancy role with Mayo footballers under John Maughan’s management. He ran a 2.30 marathon in the 1980 American National Championships in San Francisco when he was in his 40s. He remained unwaveringly loyal to all his families – those in Hollymount, his students and past-students, his work colleagues, the football teams to whom he pledged undying allegiance, and, most of all, to his wife Jill and their daughters Anna and Siobhan.

We merely touch on his accomplishments here. Volumes could be written on all he did, all he stood for, all he loved, and all he aspired to: this Irish man who lived life with an unquenchable curiosity for knowledge and progress and whose legacy will live on in the many friends, students and colleagues who were inspired, not only by his teaching, but by his constant good humour and lively wit.

Tom Reilly

Born, Lehinch, Hollymount – December 16^th, 1941

Died, Arrowe Park Hospital, Liverpool – June 11^th, 2009

* Liam Horan