| Birth name | Michael Peter Purcell | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date of birth | 6 September 1945 | ||||||||||||
| Place of birth | Brisbane, Australia | ||||||||||||
| Date of death | 5 January 2016 (aged 70) | ||||||||||||
| School | St Joseph's, Nudgee | ||||||||||||
| Rugby union career | |||||||||||||
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Michael Peter Purcell (6 September 1945 – 5 January 2016) was an Australian rugby union player who represented his country. He was born in Brisbane. [1]
Rugby union, commonly known in most of the world simply as rugby, is a contact team sport which originated in England in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is between two teams of 15 players using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field with H-shaped goalposts at each end.
Purcell, a flanker and lock, was born in Brisbane, Queensland and claimed a total of 3 international rugby caps for Australia. He died at the age of 70 in January 2016. [2]
Flanker is a position in the sport of rugby union. Each team of 15 players includes two flankers, who play in the forwards, and are generally classified as either blindside or openside flankers, numbers 6 and 7 respectively. The name comes from their position in a scrum in which they 'flank' each set of forwards. They compete for the ball – most commonly in rucks and mauls. Flankers also assist in pushing in a scrum, but are expected to detach from the scrum as soon as the ball is out to get to the play before the opposition's forwards. Flankers also participate in line-outs, either being lifted to contest or win possession, or to lift other players. Flankers are usually the key participants in the tackling process. The flankers, especially the openside, are often the fastest forwards on the team but still relied upon for tackling.
Brisbane is the capital of and the most populated city in the Australian state of Queensland, and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of 2 million, and the South East Queensland region, centred on Brisbane, encompasses a population of more than 3 million. The Brisbane central business district stands on the historic European settlement and is situated inside a peninsula of the Brisbane River, about 15 kilometres from its mouth at Moreton Bay. The metropolitan area extends in all directions along the floodplain of the Brisbane River Valley between Moreton Bay and the Great Dividing Range, sprawling across several of Australia's most populous local government areas (LGAs)—most centrally the City of Brisbane, which is by far the most populous LGA in the nation. The demonym of Brisbane is "Brisbanite" or "Brisbanian".
