Tommy Roche

Thomas Roche was born on 12 October 1918, in the townland of Ballagh, Mullingar, County Westmeath. His parents were Thomas Roche, a cattle dealer, and Kathleen Burns, a former school teacher; they had been married in 1916.^{[citation needed]} A month before he was born, Tommy's father died from the Spanish flu, leaving his mother to raise him during his infancy as a single mother.^{[citation needed]} She remarried, in 1921, to Edward Hope, with whom she had eight more children.^[1]

Roche was educated in St. Mary's C.B.S., Mullingar, and after finishing school, he moved to Tullamore in 1938.^[2]

Roche began his rugby career in 1938, when he joined Tullamore Rugby Club. During The Emergency (WW2), he was a despatch rider for Irish Army.^[2] He played for eleven different rugby clubs during those years. After the war came to an end, Roche joined Monkstown RFC, before putting rugby on hold to work as a sales representative in Limerick.^{[citation needed]} He played for Mullingar RFC during the 1946/47 season, where played as a hooker, and won a cap for Leinster. However, Roche's rugby career was cut short by an illness after only one year playing for Mullingar, and he retired.^[2]

During the 1950s, Tommy Roche held the position of President of Mullingar R.F.C., and during his tenure, the club won the Midland league for the first time. In the 1980s, a members' bar was set up in the team's clubhouse, and named the "Roche T. Room" in honour of him.^[2]