Christy Ring's Ballinskelligs holidays: 'He was as down to earth as ourselves'

Donal Cronin gives the background to Christy Ring’s summers in south Kerry

Christy Ring: Captain at rest: low-key celebrations after the 1946 All-Ireland win.

Ballinskelligs is a remote spot, clinging to the coast at the southern tip of the Iveragh Peninsula and overlooking the Atlantic.

Go back a couple of decades, however, and it was even more isolated. Donal Cronin grew up there, and the setting was spartan.

“You go there now and Ballinskelligs has a wine bar and a couple of coffee shops. The infrastructure of the sixties and seventies was very basic.

“What you had at the time was a Presentation Convent on one end of the beach and a Mercy Convent at the other end. Those were the nuns’ summer houses and the nuns would come down in their droves through the summer months to those convents for their holiday. But at the time, they still didn’t have permission to go out swimming in the middle of the day — they could only swim early in the morning, otherwise they might be seen in a bathing suit.

“Then, though, they’d walk up and down the beach all day — hot summer days in August, for instance, and they’d be in their full habits.

“There wasn’t sailing and paddle-boarding, as you have now, but flocks of nuns going up and down the beach.

“The fact that it was a great Gaeltacht that time meant we had the ‘la breas’ or summer students down studying Irish, so they’d be on the beach as well.”

So would a family from Cork, most of them with hurleys in their hands. Cronin can give the background to Christy Ring’s summers in south Kerry.

“My father was Micheál Ó Croinín, and he was the principal in the Glen National School nearby. He got a scholarship to Scoil Éinne, Pearse’s old school, so he was one of the first people out of Ballinskelligs — a very poor, rural spot in those days — on a scholarship.

“He built a small summer house next to our own home — a chalet, very basic — and the day came when Christy Ring booked it for a holiday.”

Gaelic football is the sport of the region but Ring’s name transcended any lines of demarcation.

“Unusually for the time, my Dad was a non-drinker,” says Cronin. “He went to Mass every single day and he had a huge interest in the GAA. He would have been telling us, ‘look, the greatest hurler of all time is coming to stay with us.’

Yet my mother always says that what struck her about Christy was his complete humility. When he arrived, they were expecting someone completely different after what my father had been saying, but he was very straightforward, very down to earth, very humble.”

Proof came one of the evenings Ring dropped into the Cronins.

“One night my mother was washing the saucepans after the dinner and Christy said to her, ‘what are you washing those for? Why don’t you let them out and let the dogs at them first?’

“He said that’s what they had done grown up doing at home in Cloyne, and my mother laughed and said that’s what she had grown up doing on the farm at home.

“And a discussion followed about people buying fancy dog foods and how they were wasting their money on them ... That’s my mother’s abiding memory — that it just shows that he was as down to earth as ourselves.”

The Corkman’s presence in the village crackled around on the bush telegraph quickly enough. “Like my Dad, Christy was a teetotaller and went to Mass every single day, so in a small village like Dungeagan in Ballinskelligs, two men like that were relatively rare. The two of them would come out of Mass in the evenings and would stand on the church porch chatting — suits or sports coats, too, there were no shorts and t-shirts being worn even during the holidays.

“The shopkeeper in the village was a legendary figure, John Joe O’Shea, who had gone to Blackrock College, which was unusual enough for the time. But he wasn’t a drinker either, and he also went to Mass every day.

“Then there was the postman, Maurice Curran, who never drank and who was a complete and utter obsessive about the GAA.

“So when John Joe and Maurice heard that Christy Ring was coming to Ballinskelligs they were hugely excited, and they loved meeting him to talk GAA: they were all great talkers, great conversationalists, and unusual men in a small community.

“My father would have been on his summer holidays from teaching, John Joe owned the shop himself so he could always take some time to chat, and once Maurice had the post delivered, he had the rest of the day to talk about the GAA with Christy, who was on his holidays.”

Cronin can recall Ring and his family down on the beach with the hurleys and ball, pucking around. 

That was a pretty typical day on holidays in the seventies, hurling the ball up and down the beach.

“Even though it’s a relatively recent period, it was a very different time, and the place itself is quite different now.

“My mother always said his reputation as a great sportsman didn’t seem to matter to him when he was in Ballinskelligs on holiday — he didn’t carry himself like that at all.

“Apart from my father, Maurice and John Joe a lot of people wouldn’t have known who he was. Was that part of the attraction? I don’t know, but I do know he left an impression on all of us, certainly.”

- 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.