Free Rugby Flyer by Gerard Siggins Page B

between two All Blacks. Alex then ran wide onto the right hand touch-line to avoid the covering players, but he was so quick that he was able to cut back inside again and sprint to score close to the posts. It was a sensational try, and Eoin could see why they were still talking about it eighty years later.
    A second try by the Russian winger was just as thrilling,as he cut diagonally across the field to score a second time against the powerful New Zealanders. The score flashed up as ‘England 13, New Zealand 0’, and the screen then revealed it was the first time the home team had ever beaten the All Blacks, and the last time they would do so at the ground for nearly fifty years.
    They read the captions on the display which showed an England cap and photos of the player.
    ‘He was a prince,’ gushed Dylan. ‘Wow, he must have some serious treasure.’
    Eoin read further. ‘Well, he was a Russian prince, and that didn’t mean very much in the 1930s. Do you ever listen in History class?’
    ‘What do you mean?’ asked Dylan.
    ‘Well, the ruler of Russia, the Tsar, was thrown off the throne in 1917 and he was later killed with his whole family. There haven’t been any princes, or royals of any sort, in Russia since then.’
    ‘So what was Alex doing playing rugby for England then?’
    ‘I don’t know, but a lot of people fled Russia when the revolutionaries took over. Alex was only a year old then, so I presume his family took him to England.’
    Dylan read on. ‘He was killed during the Second World War,’ it says here. ‘He was a pilot in the RoyalAir Force.’
    ‘What an amazing life he had,’ mused Eoin, ‘and he was just twenty-four when he passed away.’
    ‘So where are we going to find him?’ asked Dylan.
    ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up when you expect him least,’ came a voice from behind them.
    The boys turned to see, grinning down at them, the ghost of Prince Alexander Sergeyevich Obolensky.

C HAPTER 22
    E oin checked left and right to make sure no one else was around in that part of the museum.
    ‘Don’t worry, you two are the only ones who can see me, it seems,’ said Alex.
    ‘I’m not worried about people seeing you,’ said Eoin, ‘I’m worried about people thinking I’m talking to empty air. Can we go somewhere else, like the grandstand?’
    Eoin and Dylan followed the ghost as he walked out of the museum and made his way into the lower deck of the stand. They sat down on the plastic seats far away from any watching eyes and the staff going about their business.
    Alex sat and smiled at them. ‘Listen, I’m sorry that I was a bit snappy with you yesterday. I was a little bit rattled that you had seen me in Tipperary.’
    ‘Me too,’ admitted Eoin. ‘It seemed very weird to seeyou yesterday in a completely different country. What were you doing in Ireland anyway?’
    ‘Well, I was visiting my Uncle Nick’s house for the first time in many, many years. I was very sad to see what a bad state it was in. He didn’t have any family left, I think, so there was nobody to take it over and move in. I had some great holidays in Ireland. I remember joining a club to play a game called “gaelic”, which was a bit like rugby. I had great fun there. I used to play with a lad called Barney whose father was the groundsman.’
    Eoin looked at Dylan and did some sums in his head. ‘The groundsman in that club is still called Barney – it must be his father or grandfather that you knew.’
    ‘Hmmm, that’s interesting,’ said Alex. ‘Our family suffered enormous upheaval and tragedy in the last century at the cutting edge of history, while some people continued doing the same simple things through many generations. They were the lucky ones.’
    He looked sad again, but went on with his story.
    ‘Uncle Nick left Russia after the revolution – Nick wasn’t his real name and he wasn’t really my uncle, either. But he needed to find a new identity and my mum’s uncle, Nikolai Lubov, had