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.