Brent Pope is a New Zealand born (1961) rugby analyst on RTÉ television, rugby journalist,childrens book author, After dinner speaker and founder of Outside In Art Gallery in Dublin Ireland.
Contents |
Brent Pope played for various provincal and New Zealand underage teams before representing Canterbury and Otago at senior first division level, helping Otago to its first ever first division title in 1991. Pope played nearly 100 first class games for Otago in a career that spanned nearly 10 years with the Dunedin based side, during that time he formed loose forward trios with All Blacks Paul Henderson, Mike Brewer, Taine Randall, Josh Kronfield, Arane Pene and Jamie Joseph. Pope was selected in the original 1987 New Zealand Rugby World Cup training squad, but had to withdraw a week before the tournament began due to a serious arm injury in the final All Black trials, he was replaced by young and relatively unknown Auckland No 8 Zinzan Brooke. Pope came back after injury to be named Otago player of the year in 1987/8 and was again shortlisted for the All Blacks tour to Japan only to miss out again when the tour party was trimmed to 24 players. Pope played in a number of final All Black trials, represented the South Island, New Zealand Schools, Universities, Leinster, Barbarians, New Zealand XV and was a former Captain of the Penquins and played county provincal rugby in England and United States. He came to Ireland in 1991 where he played for both St Marys and Clontarf RFC.
Pope successfully coached both clubs to 3 separate National Division titles, 3 All Ireland Floodlit Cups, and 2 Leinster Senior Cups. Brent is still the only Leinster based Coach to have ever won the AIB League First Division title with St Marys RFC in 1999/2000,[1] he also coached at senior provincial level with Leinster in 2000.
Brent has worked for RTÉ Sport for over 15 years and has also appeared in many crossover programmes such as The Restaurant, The Den, The Afternoon Show, The Hook and Popey Roadshow, The Late Late Show,The Saturday Night Show, and various Travel programmes. Brent also starred as a singer in Charity You're A Star in 2007.
As part of his charity work he is leading a team of former Irish rugby players to Zambia in June 2011, where they will help build houses in the local community and also train with some of the local youngsters. The Brent Pope Rugby Legends Foundation has joined forces with the Habitat for Humanity Irelandwww.brentpoperugbylegends.com charity for the project. He is also the curator of an art gallery for mental health artists called Outside In Art Gallery www.outsideinartgalley.com
He is a regular feature on RTÉ Radio, Newstalk 106 and Murray Deaker in New Zealand and is a regular after dinner speaker.[1]
Brent is a regular print journalist for the Evening Echo, Daily Mail and various other magazines such as Village[2] and Emerald Rugby.
He has also published a series of award winning children's books[3] for charity. Brent also has a website for the 2011 Rugby World Cup www.Popenation.com
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||