There is no doubt that Brian Kennedy is a driven man. He has built a business empire with a turnover of more than £400million, as owner he has transformed Sale Sharks into one of the leading rugby clubs in Britain, who face Munster tomorrow in the second round of the Heineken Cup, and fathered five children.
He is ultra-competitive. Only last weekend he raced Kingsley Jones, the club's coach and former Wales captain, uphill and beat him even though there is more than ten years between them. Family - he married at 19 - sport and the commercial world are his life blood. But over the past year he has also been consumed by another cause. Kennedy has been heavily involved in supporting Gerry and Kate McCann in the search for Madeleine, their missing daughter.
Kennedy 48, is reluctant to talk about his role or the reasons why he chose to put a chunk of his fortune, estimated at more than £250million, at their disposal. He has said before that he simply felt compelled to step in. “I have chosen to keep a low profile on this,” Kennedy said yesterday. “It is not about me. It is about Madeleine. I don't want to comment personally on this except to say there is a big job still to do and we are focusing on getting it done.”
Seventeen months after her disappearance in Portugal, Kennedy remains as committed as ever to discovering what happened to Madeleine and helping the family to end their torment. “Am I still involved?” he said. “Absolutely. Have we given up hope? Have we hell. The battle has just commenced. We have plans and when we are ready to tell the world about them we will do so.”
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Kennedy has become friends with the McCanns and Gerry has been his guest at Sale. “He is a keen rugby man and really likes his sport,” Kennedy said. Asked how he thought they are coping, he replied: “The only person who could answer that is someone who has gone through the same thing. Fortunately, the vast majority of us have not. As a parent you feel for them. Whatever you feel, the horrible feeling you feel when you think about it, you have to multiply it by infinity to start getting a glimpse of how it must really feel.”
On Thursday, two newspapers had to pay substantial damages to seven friends of the McCanns who were on holiday at the time Madeleine went missing. Kennedy cannot comprehend how people could even think that the couple were somehow culpable, or how difficult it must have been to live their nightmare in public. “To lose your child and then be blamed?” he said. “It is ludicrous and horrible the things the press were saying.”
Is he optimistic that there will be a positive resolution? “I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic,” he said. “I am realistic. We are just getting on doing what can be done and who knows how it will turn out. It is a very big part of my life. There are a lot of people helping by putting in a lot of time. But as I have said, it is not about me, them, Kate or Gerry. It is about a poor little kid who might be out there needing to be found. So therefore we need to move mountains to find her.”
The discussion switches to rugby, the tremendous victory away to Clermont Auvergne in the opening round of the Heineken Cup and tomorrow's equally daunting meeting with Munster, the champions, at Edgeley Park.
“The whole occasion in France was remarkable and there were several facets to it,” Kennedy said. “It was against one of their top teams, the atmosphere was incredible, and there was a big emotional angle for Philippe [Saint Andre, the Sale director of rugby]. This is where he played for many years, captained them, where he is thought of very highly and he has come back as a conqueror on a white horse. This weekend we are going to have to do it all again.”
Standards have been set high. Kennedy believes that this team are the best in the club's history and that winning the Guinness Premiership or the Heineken Cup remain realistic targets this season. “The result last Saturday underlines the potential of this club when we get it together,” he said. “We have never had a team that could have got that result.”
The change in mentality and emphasis had its genesis in the surprising home defeat by London Irish in the final league game of last season. “We were not expected to lose that,” Kennedy said. “That set the tone for all the pre-season work.
“It was obvious there was something we were not doing right. It is about focus and mental hardness. Philippe and Kingsley decided to go about things in a different way. Whether that leads to anything we'll wait and see. But we are in a better position than we have ever been.”
