Pyne to end 50 years of heading South

Noel Pyne reaches a remarkable milestone when he makes his 50th successive appearance in the South of Ireland Championship at Lahinch next Saturday.

The 66-year-old retired Ennis teacher first appeared in the Lahinch classic in 1963 at a time when legends of the game Joe Carr, Noel Fogarty, Greg Young and Michael Guerin were in their prime. He has very happy memories of the championship, like in 1967 when he was a member of the unsuccessful Clare team in the Munster hurling final against Tipperary and the following day came through a qualifying round for the ‘South’.

“The furthest I’ve been was the quarter-final in 1986,” he recalled. “I beat Garth McGimpsey, who had already won three championships that year, and JP Fitzgerald, nowadays Rory McIlroy’s caddie, in the next round before losing to Pádraig Hogan, the current captain of the Irish team.

“I never imagined I would play in 50 successive South championships and it hasn’t always been easy to keep my handicap sufficiently low to qualify. But having reached the 50th, this will be my last South.”

We may have heard similar talk in the past but Noel, a former captain of both Ennis and Lahinch, has displayed remarkable longevity and retained an admirable level of fitness over the years to remain inside the handicap cut-off mark which this time round is 1.3. He is assured of a great welcome when he tees it up in Saturday’s first round against Gary Walsh from Mount Juliet.

The championship returns to an all match play format after a brief flirtation with stroke qualifying last year. Joining Noel Pyne in Saturday’s action is Barry Reddan (Co Louth), another well into his 60s and the champion in 1987, while a deep well of experience is also well represented by Eddie Power (Kilkenny), Pat Lyons (Cork), Peter Sheehan (Ballybunion), Niall Goulding (Portmarnock) and Joe Lyons (Birr).

The lower handicap brigade go into action in Sunday’s second round when much focus will centre on Rory McNamara (Headfort), recent winner of the North of Ireland Championship, and other well fancied players like Simon Ward (Co Louth), Niall Gorey (Muskerry), last year’s finalists Stephen Walsh (Portmarnock) and Andrew Hogan (Newlands), Pat Murray (Limerick), Gary Hurley (West Waterford), Keelan McDonough (Athlone) and Reeve Whitson (Mourne).