Christy Ring and Gaelic football: An accidental if eventful, relationship

Ring scored two goals on his St Nicks debut after showing up among the crowd

Christy Ring, pictured in 1954, displaying his collection of medals. 

On Friday evening June 18, 1948, St Nicholas faced UCC in the second round of the City Division Junior Football Championship at Douglas.

St Nicks brought the bare 15 players to the game and trailed the College side by 4-1 to 2-1 at half time. Early in the second half, a Nicks player received a nasty injury and had to retire from the game.

Christy Ring was among the spectators and, even though this was just nine days before Cork played Limerick in the Munster SHC semi-final, he offered to tog off and bring Nicks back up to full strength. Playing gear was found, and Ring made his unscheduled debut for the football wing of his club. Ring scored two goals and created two more as Nicks won 6-2 to 5-1.

He had played with Glen Rovers since 1941 but until that evening, he had never togged out with St Nicks.

He did not play football again that year but from the beginning of 1949 until 1956, he played in almost all the St Nicks senior football championship games. St Nicks were very competitive during those years, reaching the finals of 1950, ’51 and ’54, and winning the 1954 final.

Ring was sent off once while playing football. It happened when St Nicks played Macroom in the 1949 county football semi-final. The scores were level when the referee suddenly stopped the play and ordered Ring from the field. The referee in his report said Ring had obstructed him in the course of his duty by making a remark.

St Nicks vigorously pleaded Ring’s innocence and Jack Lynch, who also played in the game, left the Dáil to travel to Cork to attend the board meeting as a witness on Ring’s behalf.

The referee’s report, however, stood, and Ring received a one-month suspension. The suspension did not affect Glen Rovers as they had already won the county title, but Ring did miss out on Cork’s National Hurling League game against Kilkenny, which Kilkenny won.

Ring featured in all St Nicks’ games in 1950, when Nicks lost the final narrowly to Garda.

He did not play in the 1951 final which Nicks lost to Collins, but he featured in all the games in 1954 when St Nicks defeated Clonakilty 2-11 to 0-3. That win completed a senior football and hurling double for the club — and Ring.

Christy Ring’s last football championship game for St Nicks was in October of 1956, against Millstreet. It was a bad-tempered game during which Ring had his jaw broken.

The sending off of a Millstreet player in the second half led to a pitch invasion by the crowd which escalated into a mini-riot. Millstreet won and happily The Cork Examiner reported that “at the end of the game differences were forgotten and the teams left the field on amicable terms.”

By 1957, many of the players Ring had played football with were retiring and Ring himself was going on 37 years of age. He had contributed his lot to football in Blackpool, and from then until the end of his playing career in 1967, he put all his effort and concentration into playing hurling for Cork and Glen Rovers.

Snapshot: Football talk

"Only on one occasion do I remember him talking about football, which he played at club level with St Nicholas. 

"He regarded it, as indeed did Michael Cusack, as an inferior game to hurling.

"He said he had little time for players whom he saw described by sportswriters (still harping on them) as artists and stylists. 

"Unless they were able to lift their team when the team needed their skills most but were only good when, as he put it, “cycling down the hill with the wind at their backs”, they had no business playing a competitive team game.

"He mentioned two players whom he thought had this essential quality. Paddy Doherty of Down and Sean Purcell of Galway."

-Breandan O hEithir

- 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.