'The only one comparable was Mick Mackey': Jimmy Lynam recalls his team-mate Christy Ring

He celebrated his 95th birthday this month, but Jimmy Lynam is as sharp now on Ring, the Glen and Cork as he was terrorising defences back then

Jimmy Lynam, Glen Rovers legend, with his impressive medal haul.

Jimmy Lynam and Gus O’Brien had a game to see and a road to travel.

September 1943. Cork in an All-Ireland final. Trains weren’t an option at the time but the road to Dublin was wide open, if two hardy teenagers had the legs for it.

“We left Cork about midday on Friday,” says Lynam now. “We had a bit of grub in Hawker Grady’s in Fermoy — he was a good player himself in his day — and then on to Cashel. Gus had some connection in Cashel so we stayed there for the night.

“On to Dublin on the Saturday, stayed over and got to the match on Sunday. We stayed on in Dublin, and we started back on the bikes to Cork on the Tuesday morning.”

On the return journey, they got as far as Cashel and stayed the night again. Then, Lynam recalls, they decided to take the scenic route.

The following morning we thought about the road — that time it was Cahir, Mitchelstown, Fermoy and on, and we said ‘we’ll be home too early’. We went off and down over The Vee and called into Mount Melleray. We got home eventually via Youghal. We were in no hurry.”

And that, reader, is how Jimmy Lynam made it to the All-Ireland final of 1943. He celebrated his 95th birthday on the first of this month.

A lightning-fast forward, Lynam came through the proving ground of Cork’s underage scene of the early forties, one which owed much to a long-vanished powerhouse on the city’s northside.

“Up to 1939, the youngest championship was minor. There was a team on the northside, St Anne’s — they’re gone now — and they ran a street league, and the Under 16 competition grew out of that.

“All the clubs — the Glen, the Barrs, the Rockies — entered teams, and the North Mon entered a team. Dave O’Brien was instrumental in organising that team, and because it came from the technical side of the Mon, they called it after the school itself — the Gerald Griffin Memorial Technical School. So we were Gerald Griffin’s.

“We were very successful, we won a few trophies at under-16, and Gerald Griffin’s lasted a few years. Our captain on the team was a fine player, and he was one of the reasons we were so keen to see the All-Ireland final in 1943.

“Because our captain with Gerald Griffin’s that time went on to captain Cork in the 1943 All-Ireland final: Mick Kenefick.”

Another one of the Cork stars in 1943 was a clubmate of Lynam’s. Within 12 months he and Christy Ring were playing senior alongside each other.

“I played with him first in 1944. The county final that year was played on October 27 that year, against the Barrs, and I was 19 on the first of that month.

“A month before the county final, Cork won the All-Ireland, the four-in-a-row, remember. The Glen had Din Joe Buckley, Paddy O’Donovan, Dr Jim Young, Jack Lynch and Christy Ring on that team.

“That was the company I was in when I went into the dressing room. At 19. The whistle went to go out onto the field we paused for a couple of seconds, and the committee men were saying ‘come on, ye’ll win nothing in here’, and Paddy O’Donovan spoke to me: ‘Come on boy, we’ll look after you’.”

Willie O'Callaghan, Glen Rovers club president, Monsignor Kevin O'Callaghan, and Jimmy Lynam enjoying the Glen Rovers GAA victory dinner dance at the Rochestown Park Hotel in 2017. Picture: David Keane.

A decade later Lynam and Ring were still teammates. And not just in hurling.

“Very few people know Ring has a senior football medal with St Nicks — he won it in 1954.

“That was a year of glory for us because we won the double that year, hurling and football. As a footballer he was tricky. Good corner-forward. When he’d get down over the ball, there was no getting it back off him.

“He had it up there, see (taps head), but he had everything. He was sturdy, he had artistry.”

Decades later, Lynam has a clear view of his own status as a player. “For one thing, I had no great ambitions. I never said to myself ‘I’ll make that team or this team, so I’ll train mad to get picked on it, I’ll drive on’. On the field I probably lacked a bit of confidence, looking back now.

“But in one of the county finals I played, I got two goals against the Rockies. At the celebration that night Dr Jim Young was chairman, and he introduced me to one of his pals - ‘this is Jimmy Lynam, he nearly beat Blackrock on his own’.”

That was 1948. Within a couple of years, he had joined Ring in the red and white of Cork. “You were always confident when you had Ring with you. With the club definitely, but even with Cork, when you had Ring alongside you then you had to be confident.

Before the game even began you felt you were four or five points up because he was there. That went through the team. You had that much confidence in him, that he’d have those scores at least in the game and the rest of us just had to chip in.

“He was tough as nails, but the skill was incredible. One flick and the ball was gone. He also used a very heavy hurley — they’d drive a ball through a stone wall.”

Lynam describes himself as “an unlucky captain”, though the evidence isn’t conclusive.

“I played in 14 county finals and lost six, three hurling, three football. We lost one football final to the Army team, but they were able get special training done, while that time we had lads going down to Dunlop’s for night work when the soldiers were able to train during the day.

“We lost to the Garda team another year, and they had a few inter county lads here and there.

“We lost to Clonakilty in another final but we didn’t mind that — we always got on well with the Clon lads, we had a great relationship with them, any time they wanted a challenge game or anything.

“There was one other county final, though, and we beat Clon in it - 2-11 to 0-3. That was 1954, the year of the double.”

In hurling he picks out the differences clearly between then and now: “In our time, the ball would be cleared out of the square, and the corner-back would run out after it and pull on it; the centre-field man would see the corner-back move and would already be moving to the wing for that clearance. He’d meet the ball and pull on it.

“The cheering was rising all the time, the ball was gone half the field with two pucks.

“Now the players have to have the ball in their hand all the time — and throwing it instead of handpassing.

In our time, it would have been a very empty life without the matches. And the training. I’d leave the house at home and walk down a hundred yards to collect another player, Charlie O’Flaherty, and we’d walk out through Blackpool, up under Garvey’s Bridge and up to the old Glen field.

“That was from April to a county final in October, maybe. I was often at home putting my togs and boots in a bag to head off training and if there was a neighbour in the house my mother, God rest her, would say, ‘look at him — the only time he’ll put a pick of flesh on himself is Christmas.’

“We were out at matches eight or nine months of the year. We were playing football as well, so the legs were strong all the time from walking. No hamstrings, no ligaments.

“If we weren’t walking we were cycling, but now people don’t take that exercise. They drive.” 

(One of his favourite Ring lines came in a car, as it happens: “Going up past Kilworth, there’s a sweeping view there as you come over the hill. Someone said one time on the way to a game, “Wouldn’t that make a beautiful picture?” “It would, said Ring, “but it’d take an awful lot of paint.” He was great company on a trip like that, people can forget that.”)

The afternoon is drawing on. I put all the chips on the table and ask the question: has he ever seen better than Ring?

“Never. The only one who might be comparable was Mick Mackey. He was tough, he had the artistry, but other fellas . . . they wouldn’t carry Ring’s boots. The game is very different now. I see the goalkeeper hitting the ball to a corner-back nowadays; in our time Willie Murphy would have it down in the other square with the puck-out.

“The game has changed over the years. But what hasn’t?”

- 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.