O’Reilly, Tony

Tony O’Reilly, byname of Sir Anthony John Francis O’Reilly, (born May 7, 1936, Dublin, Ireland), Irish rugby union player and business executive who reached notable heights in both fields. He played 29 Test (international) matches for Ireland and set British Lions (now the British and Irish Lions) records for tries scored while on tour in South Africa (1955) and New Zealand (1959).

O’Reilly played rugby for Old Belvedere and Leicester while a student and made his international debut at age 18 as a centre against France in 1955. That same year he became the youngest-ever player selected for the British Lions and played on the wing at Ellis Park in Johannesburg against South Africa before a then world-record crowd of 95,000, scoring a try in a famous 23–22 Lions victory. He played for the Lions again during their 1959 tour of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, scoring a record of 22 tries in both Test and non-Test matches on the tour that year, breaking his own record of 16, set in 1955. He also scored a record six tries in total for the Lions in his 10 Test matches. He was recalled to the Irish team to play against England in 1970 after a seven-year absence. He remained involved in rugby as a member of the Irish Rugby Football Union’s Commercial Committee.

O’Reilly graduated from University College, Dublin, in 1958 and received a doctorate in agricultural marketing from the University of Bradford in England in 1980. During the 1960s he headed the Irish Dairy Board, creating the internationally known brand Kerrygold. In 1979 he became president of the Heinz Corporation, and in 1987 he became the first nonfamily member to be chairman of Heinz.

At the turn of the 21st century, O’Reilly was believed to be Ireland’s richest person, with an estimated personal fortune of nearly $2 billion. After leaving Heinz in 1998, he focused on publishing through his chairmanship of Independent News and Media (INM), parent company of many newspapers in Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. He was also chairman of Waterford Wedgwood, a manufacturer of glass and china. O’Reilly’s investments in that company, however, soon contributed to growing financial difficulties. Exacerbating the situation was a failed power struggle to gain control of INM, which led to his ouster in 2009. Six years later he was declared bankrupt by a Bahamian court.

Active in many cultural and charitable organizations, O’Reilly was chairman of the Ireland Funds, a worldwide network of people of Irish ancestry and others dedicated to raising funds to support programs encouraging peace, reconciliation, and constructive change throughout all of Ireland. He established the O’Reilly Foundation in 1998 in order to fund educational projects in Ireland. He was knighted in 2001.