[1] An outstanding scrum half in the late 1920s and early 30s, he was captain in the 1931 season when Ireland beat England for the third successive time by a margin of a single point.
Sugden was brought to Dublin at the age of four when his father retired to Westminster Road, Foxrock, and went to preparatory school at Earlsfort House before attending Denstone College, Staffordshire.
Sugden went on to become one of the finest scrum-halves ever to play for Ireland, and his half-back partnership with his great friend Eugene Davy (qv) is regarded by many as the best ever seen in the green shirt.
He missed only one international between his debut and his final appearance against Wales in 1931, when he was sensationally dropped in favour of his Leinster understudy, Paul Murray (qv), for the 1927 game against France.
The Belfast defeat was to be Sugden's final international, as it was for other Irish stalwarts – Jack Arigho (qv), Jimmy Farrell, and ‘Jammie’ Clinch (qv).
All told, in twenty-eight internationals Sugden finished on the winning side sixteen times, lost ten games, and drew two, scoring three tries in the process; a record that would compare favourably with any other Irish player before the professional era.
His natural ability is rendered all the more extraordinary when one considers that for almost all of his international career he was not playing club football due to his work commitments.
A measure of his stature is that in 1987 he and his half-back partner Eugene Davy were the inaugural members of the Irish Rugby Writers Hall of Fame.
Sugden left Ireland shortly after graduating from TCD, spending five years teaching at Glenalmond College, Scotland.
He subsequently moved to the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon, where he taught modern languages, and retired as head of department in 1974.