Michael Moynihan: New documentary celebrating Christy Ring - the greatest ever
Christy Ring: Man And Ball airs Thursday night at 10.15pm
This Thursday night there’s a documentary airing on RTÉ which readers may be interested in.
Christy Ring: Man And Ball was made by the team which made The Game: The Story of Hurling a couple of years ago, and as the Yanks say, in the interests of full disclosure I confess to being part of that team.
While making the earlier documentary we were struck by the strength of feeling about Ring, almost 40 years after his passing and a full half-century since he had played for Cork. Hearing Tommy Walsh sketch an appreciation of Ring’s career was surprising until the Kilkenny man described himself as a Ring fanatic.
Given Ring’s anniversary was this year, a full programme dedicated to the greatest seemed an obvious route to take, but when we started putting the pieces together for the documentary it was gratifying to be met with enthusiasm every time a potential contributor was contacted.
Every one of them had a particular yarn to tell, of course. The likes of Jimmy Lynam, who cycled to Croke Park from Cork in 1946 to see Ring score one of the goals that set him apart, had more than one.
Ring had a habit of generating stories, of course. A few Decembers ago I dropped up to Shannon for a cup of tea with Fr Harry Bohan: I left with a better perspective on life as a whole, which is a by-product of one those cups of tea, but he also shared a yarn that I’ve recounted many times since.
Accosted by a hurling bore keen to share his expertise one time, Fr Harry’s innate politeness meant he gave this gentleman’s theories a fair hearing before telling him about one occasion in the seventies, when Clare had a great team that reached successive Munster finals.
At one game Fr Harry was on the line for a Cork-Clare encounter when one of the Cork selectors came over to shake his hand: Christy Ring.
“You’re doing well with them, and you’re young,” said Ring to the Clareman.
“Thanks,” said Bohan. “I don’t know much about it, though.”
“I don’t know much about it myself,” said Ring, heading back up the line to the Cork dugout.
“Now,” said Fr Harry, back in the present day, to the man who was boring him senseless, “There you had the greatest hurler of all time saying he didn’t know much about the game, yet here you are and you seem to know all about it.”
Anyone born in 1920, as Ring was, grew up with the State, and one of the interesting threads to the documentary - well expressed by Paul Rouse of this parish - is the way the hurler became a symbol as well as a sportsman, almost.
Which makes it all the more striking to have the Christy Ring Jr on hand to point to the appropriateness of the programme’s title - the man behind the myth.
There are any number of interesting sideshows to the documentary which canny viewers will fix on.
For instance, the line-up of contributors is one which may surprise longtime observers of the Cork scene given the diversity of personalities on show. I’ll just leave it at that.
On another level the vivid colour footage of Glen Rovers and UCC from one of their legendary clashes in the sixties will likely make those of a certain vintage suck in their tummies and recall a time when they themselves saw close-quarters action in the old Athletic Grounds.
Clear as a bell, though, is John Fitzgibbon’s pithy summation of Ring’s greatness. As a man who knew where the goal was himself in his playing days, Fitzgibbon is well qualified to give his view.
I won’t spoil it here, but you won’t be disappointed when you hear it.
Readers have probably noted the gathering storm in rugby, where high profile former players are now emerging with stories of dementia and possible chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
England’s World Cup winner Steve Thompson is probably the most prominent of those players, giving powerful testimony recently about the after-effects of a playing career at the (near-literal) coal face, the front row in international rugby.
Other sports are also coming under the microscope. Evidence about the long-term ramifications of head injuries in professional soccer, ice hockey and American football is equally discomfiting.
The point is this: with improvements in strength and conditioning, in physical size and nutrition, athletes in all of these sports are bigger and stronger, and likely to get even bigger and stronger again. This leads to physical punishment on a scale unimagined when these sports were codified last century, or in the century before last, particularly when the introduction of professionalism means that motivations are mixed, to say the least.
And this in turn leads to another uncomfortable contradiction for sports with a head injury problem. If one of the selling points of your sport is its tradition and heritage - that’s a selling point for every sport - what’s the best way forward when some elements of that tradition and heritage are having a serious impact on the long-term health of its top practitioners?
If it means that the better you are at your sport in the here and now the more likely you are to have health problems in the long term, how can that be sustained?
Sorry to have to report on the passing of a great friend of this column, Paddy Fitzpatrick of Ballinskelligs, over the weekend.
Over the course of several summers a cup of tea with Paddy and a long chat on matters GAA became a regular feature and an enjoyable pitstop on the holidays. The house was always an easy one to find - the Clare jersey hanging in the window set it apart in deepest south Kerry (his late wife Katherine was a Banner woman) and the conversation was as likely to touch on hurling as football.
A couple of years ago we put down a great evening watching Cork hammer Tipperary in the Munster U21 final, with goals and points raining down from the red and white.
“They’re good,” said Paddy. “But what if the two teams meet again?” When I was up in the Gaelic Grounds a couple of months later watching Tipperary chase Cork down in the All-Ireland final - coached by one Liam Cahill, I might add - I couldn’t help thinking of Paddy’s query.
Condolences to John, Mary, Patrick, Ann, Michael, Kathy, Eileen and Siobhán.
If you want an enjoyable read in your Christmas stocking then it’s hard to look past David Sedaris at any time of the year.
The Best Of Me, as the name might suggest, is a collection of his greatest hits.
So long as it contains You Can’t Kill The Rooster and Six To Eight Black Men I’m happy: regular readers will know that I have bored for years about Sedaris, trumpeting his latest book as soon as it appears.
Best of luck also to Eimear Ryan of this parish, who has a novel out next year - Holding Her Breath is published by Penguin in June.
Treat yourself, it’s Christmas (almost).
