Stories from the frontline with Christy Ring: 'There was a bit of a fight, but it wasn’t as bad as it was made out'

Over the years we’ve sent Michael Moynihan down the highways and byways to talk to hurlers and footballers, and Christy Ring’s name popped up more than once among his contemporaries

A colourised portrait of Christy Ring alongside the original

“The three best players I saw were Ring, Jimmy Doyle and Eddie Keher – the three best consistent hurlers, though it helped they were from three top counties. I’m inclined to put Ring first among them. I found him okay to mark but he was inclined to get wild at times on the field.” 

The speaker? The late Michael Maher, head chef in the feared Hell’s Kitchen backline that Tipperary fielded in the fifties and sixties.

Ring himself paid a stark tribute to the Tipperary man (“there’s no change out of Maher”) and the Holycross clubman could recall a particular clash that put Ring in hospital.

“I enjoyed it all,” said Maher. “We never felt we’d get hurt. I gave Ring a shot of a shoulder one day – a harmless one – and he fell, but he came down on his wrist and broke it. I got the blame but it was the fall that did it.

“That was 1957, the day Mackey was the umpire, and they had an exchange of views as he went off.” 

Maher knew that Ring went to hospital after that game and sent him a card wishing him well.

“He appreciated it. He came to visit me after and thanked me for it, and we became good friends.

If he was around Tipperary working after, we’d meet up for a chat. About hurling, what else?” 

Willie John Daly spent years alongside Ring in the red and white of Cork, and he was sharp enough to spot the master change instruments at a vital time in one game.

“Time was running out in the 1956 Munster final and we were well behind,” recalled Willie John for this writer before he passed away in 2017. 

“I remember him coming down to the sideline and wondering what he was at. He was changing his hurley.” 

Ring had been well held by Limerick all day but he went back into the fray with the new hurley and got three goals in four minutes to win the game.

What about the time the two of them went to a Munster football final and ended up in Waterville?

“A hell of a journey down from Killarney, but we had a great time. We went in for our tea in Waterville and a priest approached the table - a man in his company wanted to meet Ring but was shy about coming over himself. It was Ronnie Delany.” 

Willie John wasn’t quite as quick to the table a few years earlier. Cork won a stormy All-Ireland final in 1953 against Galway, and the following morning some members of the defeated side visited the Cork players in Barry’s Hotel with revenge in mind.

“I was slow getting up and they were after coming down that time and had a bit of a row. There was a lot of talk about that after, but what about it?” 

A sensible view, and one shared by another Cork - and Glen Rovers - teammate of Ring’s.

“The morning after six of us, including Ring, were sitting at a table in Barry’s Hotel,” remembered John Lyons in a 2005 conversation.

“I saw these Galway lads come in. There was a bit of a fight but it wasn’t as bad as it was made out.” 

The Galway players were angry that Ring’s marker, Mickey Burke, had been injured in the previous day’s game, with Ring believed to be responsible for the injury - though in conversation Lyons said that after the final a different Cork player told him he might have been the one who struck Burke accidentally.

“It was a tough era of hurling,” said Lyons. “People might have said that Ring was dirty but he wasn’t. He was single-minded about winning the ball and getting a score and nothing in between was going to distract him.

He was well able to take care of himself, but he had to be. We often saw him come into the dressing-room black and blue.” 

In hurling terms Ring “was a genius,” said Lyons. “He was the best I ever saw. I never saw anyone do anything on the field that Ring couldn’t do, and maybe better.

“In 1946 we were training and Ring put a seventy over the bar. The likes of Jack Lynch and Alan Lotty were slagging him, saying he couldn’t do it off his left. He changed over and put another seventy over the bar.” 

A decade later little had changed. Cork were surprised by Clare in the Munster championship of 1955 - the Banner got home by a single point, with Cork left to bemoan a late scoring opportunity from a sideline cut which was wasted. Lyons had occasion to visit the old Athletic Grounds soon afterwards.

“The next Wednesday I was below and chatting to Billy Long, the groundsman, and I noticed that one part of the field was cut up along the sideline. Billy told me that Ring had already been down there, practicing his sideline cuts.”

- You can purchase the Irish Examiner's 20-page special publication to mark the centenary of Christy Ring's birth with your Friday edition of the Irish Examiner in stores or from our epaper site.