Plenty of bottle, all Cork

HE’S not going to go all Roy about the medal.

When his fellow county man, Mr Keane from Mayfield, looked back on Manchester United’s magical 1999 season, he’d claim that he personally only won the double that year, not the treble. It didn’t matter that no one did more to get United to that Champions League final in Barcelona; by virtue of not playing in that final through suspension Roy Keane disowns that medal. “No matter how many people tell me I deserve that Champions League medal,” he’d write in his autobiography, “I know I don’t.”

Eleven years later Anthony Lynch received the biggest medal going in his sport. Like Keane, he didn’t feature in the final. In fact he didn’t play a single minute in that 2010 championship campaign, due to recurring injuries. Yet ask him now that he’s finished up if he feels he genuinely won his All Ireland medal, and modesty isn’t going to have Lynch pretend that he didn’t. He won that medal alright. He earned it.