Tyrone's punk hero John Lynch: 'I’m not saying I was brave, but there was a lack of fear'

If John Lynch didn’t exist, he could have been dreamt up as a caricature of an 80s footballer

John Lynch hoisted by fans during Tyrone's 1996 championship campaign. ©INPHO/Billy Stickland

PICTURE the scene. A fortnight before the All-Ireland final, 2021. Dublin are in their bunker game-planning. The meeting is just about to break up before Dessie Farrell casually mentions to keep Saturday free, the week before the final for a half-marathon fund-raising walk.

Can’t imagine it, can you?

That’s exactly how it was for the footballers of Tyrone however, 35 years ago when they were gearing up to face Kerry at the fag-end of The Golden Years. A sponsored walk from Carrickmore to Omagh, rattling buckets, thanking everyone for their generosity eight days before the ball went in.

And stuck in the middle of it all – how could you miss him – was John ‘Tar’ Lynch who would pick up an All-Star for his performances that year despite breaking his leg in the final.

It’s said that the game, or more accurately the dedication and conformity required to survive in the modern game is producing a generation of milquetoast characters. That may be unfair. But look around and you will not see many like Lynch.

If Lynch didn’t exist, he could have been dreamt up as a caricature of an 80s footballer. An Auf Wiedersehen, Pet extra, re-imagined as a Tyrone footballer.

The earring? The Def Leppard mullet? It wasn’t that outlandish at the time around Castlederg.

“It’s just growing up in that area. I was a big music fan. I grew up in the punk era. The likes of the Sex Pistols, The Ramones and that kind of stuff.

“I had a great friend Eamonn McMenamin and we used to go to concerts. The Radiators From Space in Dublin and all those gigs. Going to a punk concert back in those days were something to behold.” 

If the Punk movement was about doing it yourself and upsetting the establishment through mayhem, then it ran through Lynch.

In 1987 when playing Compromise Rules, Australian opponent Ross Gibbs punched Lynch. He got a headbutt in response.

“If you talk about going back even further,” Lynch recalls now, “people would have thought of me as a dirty footballer.

“But I never thought I was dirty. I just got stuck in. My own body suffered because of it. 

"The amount of broken bones and damage I have done to my own body left me the way it did.

“That’s the way I played. I didn’t intend to hurt anybody, I used my body as a battering ram sometimes to stop people, to stop things happening. Sometimes when you come from where I came from you have to be brave, you can’t walk away.

“I’m not saying I was brave, but there was a lack of fear and I didn’t concern myself with the consequences of getting stuck in. But that’s the way Gaelic football was then.” 

In a long-forgotten challenge game against Armagh, he got involved when a gauntlet was thrown down. 

“I remember Plunkett (Donaghy) was standing with the two fists up but he wasn’t getting stuck in. So I took the initiative.” 

Gerard Houlihan arrived as a peacemaker but was caught by a stray boot and his nose was broken.

Such an event would carry repercussions. When Armagh came to Omagh to play Tyrone in the 1989 Ulster Championship, they were heading in for half-time nine points ahead.

Back then the players had to walk through a section of the old nightclub on tiles. Someone went down, the exact nature of a fall or a push is disputed. Lynch ended up being knocked out cold. One player admitted it was a bizarre and terrifying experience with around 60 people all in close quarters trying to punch each other.

Funny thing, he never hurt himself playing for his club. It was all with Tyrone.

“Down here with us, I would never have classed our area as mad out and out Gaelic people. Maybe now we are more,” he explains.

“But I remember going to play for Tyrone in a National League match on a Sunday morning and there wouldn’t have been a sinner going to it from the ‘Derg. That has changed now.

“Up around east Tyrone, the Loughshore, that is the heartland when it comes to Gaelic football in Tyrone. Now I would say they eat, sleep and shit Gaelic football.

“I always knew myself, with Castlederg we were playing Junior football and Junior football at the best of times is tough. But when you are meeting teams from east Tyrone – there was a team, they are gone now, called The Windmill – Brockagh, Derrytresk, lads who are on the verge of packing it in… 

"Maybe it was the look I had, or that I was a county footballer, but the amount of stick I had to take was unreal back then.” 

Former Tyrone footballer John Lynch. This image was used as part of Tyrone GAA's Many Hands, One County campaign PHOTOGRAPHER: Fehin Quinn, Nine874 Creative ©

Nowadays, Lynch can be found all over the country with his plaster mouldings business. Recently he has been working in Adare Manor. He still gets recognised.

It’s not just football in his world. Indeed, it is a mere sliver of the man. He’s still rocking the blonde tips and the music scene. He paints with oils and sketches with charcoal, anything from buildings to scenery to more abstract images such as a hurler placing a sliotar for a sideline cut.

Five years ago he suffered broken ribs after coming off a mountain bike on one of several descents from a 12,000 foot altitude in the Alps. Most weekends he packs the bikes and heads for the Gortin Glens to get that thrill.

He married Christine Gallen, a daughter of Hugh, a founding member of Finn Valley Athletics Club. Christine still holds a number of Donegal running titles for various disciplines and after being brought into the athletics fold himself, Lynch uses that background in his coaching.

Most recently he had been helping his old Tyrone teammate Damian O’Hagan in the Coalisland management but will link up with Sean Teague and Greencastle this season.

“Based on my knowledge on the athletics side of things, I don’t think football is all about athletics. I feel both parts are important, but the fitter you are, the more you are going to get out of it. You look at the way the Dubs are now, their fitness levels are through the roof.

They have the greatest players too of course, but fitness is first when it comes to getting teams ready.” 

He’s always loved the nuts and bolts of training since he joined Art McCrory’s panel. McCrory read all about the training methods in the Eastern Bloc and attempted to recreate them on plasterers, labourers, farmers and students from Tyrone.

Weights, circuit training session and plyometrics were introduced. Sessions were devoted to bounding.

“The problem was, Art had all this stuff going on at once,” explains Lynch.

“We were doing track work, gym work. But he didn’t understand the science of it all and the recovery.

“We were doing three or four sessions a night whereas now it would be spread out over a week. Art used to take us to Omagh. We were running in from Gortnagarn into the pitch or the track in Omagh. We might have done twenty 200 metre sprints then against the clock. And then a weights session. I would have got a lot of injuries myself through that loading, loading and loading.” 

He believes he would blend into the modern game with the emphasis on speed and he sneers at some contemporaries from his playing days who buy the nostalgia line that ‘twas better in their day.

“I think we are in a good spot where the association is, the player welfare, things that were needed. Evolution of society makes us aware of stuff we should have had back then, but it did us no harm not to have it, if that makes sense.”