Tiernan Stynes on emulating Jim: 'I never thought I could be so connected to my dad again'
Tiernan Stynes via Instagram
This Saturday lunchtime in the Armenian capital city of Yerevan, a 20-year-old from Melbourne will emulate something his father once did 34 years ago in Melbourne's own Waverley Park — stand at six foot six inches for the tricolour and Amhrán na bhFiann minutes before playing for Ireland.
All these years after Jim Stynes left Dublin for Australia to become its most beloved adopted son, Tiernan Stynes is in a way rounding the circle and bringing it all back home; over three decades on from his dad playing alongside Jack O’Shea in International Rules, he is suiting and shooting up for the Irish U20 men’s basketball national team in the European championships.
Tiernan was only seven when Jim’s all too brief but full life ended; in fact one of Jim’s last social engagements was to attend and enjoy his son’s birthday party precisely a week before he finally succumbed to the melanoma on his spine at just 45 years of age.
Naturally those days are just a blur to Tiernan. The state funeral with “the police escort and everything. It was crazy. It was so big”. But he still has a vivid memory of his father. His essence. His being.
“It’s weird because it was so long ago, but I remember him well, yeah. He was awesome. He was really funny. I was hyper as a child and I remember one time I was egging at him and he just picked me up and flung me into the pool!
“And I used to always hassle him to teach me to play footy. Even when he was sick I’d try to get him to kick with me. I was really into footy back then. Loved everything about it. Being around the club [Melbourne, which Jim was president of], going to the games, the training. It was magical.”
As he approached his teens though, he gravitated more towards the hoop in their driveway which his older sister Matisse had a flair and love for. The summer of 2015 he was glued to the NBA finals, watching his fellow Victorian Matthew Dellavedova and fellow Australian Andrew Bogut sharing the same court as LeBron James and Steph Curry. The Melbourne Tigers had become one of the most attractive sports franchises in town, creating a base and thirst for future local talent to be grown.
“I was just enthralled by it. How fast-paced it was. How skilled it was. And fun. I still played footy until I was about 12 but I probably got a bit burned out from it. I wasn’t enjoying it as much, training in the cold, the rain and the mud.
“I was quite scrawny as a kid so basketball probably suited me more; it wasn’t as physical as footy. The school I was with really took me under my wing and I could and feel myself getting better while the footy had come to feel like a real grind.”
As he rose up the ranks he caught the attention of US college scouts; this past season he was a freshman with Quincy College, a NCAA Division Two team in Illinois, just an hour or so from St Louis, where he’ll return in September.
But also in Melbourne he came under the tutelage and to the attention of Jessica Scannell, the Irish international. From their conversations the seed was planted that perhaps someday he could become one too.
Earlier this year he secured the contact details of Tommy Walsh, the Irish U20 men’s coach. Walsh, as someone who was born and reared in New York before coming to play in his forefather’s native country in the early 2000s, could identify with Stynes’ backstory but needed to see in the flesh if he was as good a kid and player as he had been told.
“I’d watched some video Tiernan sent,” says Walsh, “but we get plenty of videos from overseas players with Irish passports wanting to represent Ireland. But Tiernan flew in from Illinois in the middle of his exams to make our trials. I didn’t even know he was showing up until the day before. When I saw this 6’6” basketball body walking in I was intrigued.
“We had a four-hour session and he just kept pushing his jet-lagged self. He attacked every drill. He didn’t miss many shots. And he bounced a few bodies off him when close to the rim. Half my team was still in America at college but I knew that day Tiernan was going to be a lock and great fit for our team.
“It was a nice phone call to make to tell him I’d like to have him play for Ireland. I couldn’t have been more pleased for him. He’s a basketball junkie and you can tell how much playing for Ireland means to him.”
After getting back to Quincy to complete his exams, Tiernan returned to Ireland last month to train with the U20 national squad proper. He stayed in Ballyboden with Fergus McCabe, the business partner and best friend of his uncle Brian, the 1995 All-Ireland winner with Dublin who also now lives in Melbourne. Right across the road from the McCabes is the same house where Brian and Jim grew up.
It’s been quite the journey, walking the same streets which his dad would as a teen in 1980s Dublin, having no clue that someday he’d play in the AFL, be voted its best and fairest, and be bestowed the honour of a state funeral that was televised live.
“Everyone has been so nice and kind to me,” says Tiernan, “driving me everywhere.
“It’s crazy. I never thought I could be so connected to my dad again and his heritage, just coming back here and meeting all his friends.
"Do I still think about him? All the time. It’s really motivating, really awesome, to know that someone related to me made it in sport.”
Became an international, even.
Just like he himself now.
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