Christy Ring.
Christy Ring was born in 1920 at Kilboy, less than a mile from the small village of Cloyne in Co Cork. Christened Nicholas Christopher Michael, he was second of five children born to Mary and Nicholas Ring. The family later moved to Spittal Street in Cloyne village. A statue to Christy now stands on the site of their home. Christy was very close to his parents and it was his father, a former Cloyne hurler, who instilled a passion for the game in his young son by taking him to the big games in Cork, making the 18-mile journey by bicycle with his son on the cross-bar.
Christy was educated at the local national school in Cloyne, where he was noted as a quiet but diligent pupil. On one occasion, the school master, Maurice Spillane, offered a prize of a hurley and sliotar to the boy who would get the highest grade in the school. Christy applied himself and got first place from among 48 pupils. As was common at the time, he received no second-level education and left school at the age of 14. His first job was as an apprentice mechanic with the Williams firm in Midleton, before he moved to Cork city where he found work as a lorry driver with Córas Iompair Éireann. About 1953 he became a delivery man with Shell Oil, a position he held until his death. He always carried a hurley and sliotar with him everywhere in the cab of the lorry.
In 1938 he won a county minor championship medal with St. Enda’s Club, an amalgamation of Cloyne and Middleton. He played hurling with the Glen Rovers club from 1941 until 1967 and was a member of the Cork senior inter-county team from 1939 until 1963. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest hurlers in the history of the game. Many former players, commentators and fans rate him as the number one player of all-time.
Over the course of his career, he won eight All-Ireland medals with Cork (a record he shares with Tipp’s John Doyle), two minor All-Ireland medals (one as a sub), four National League medals, ten Munster championship medals, a record 18 Railway Cup medals and 14 county senior championship medals with Glen Rovers and one football championship medal with St. Nicholas. He played in ten All-Ireland finals and in 22 Railway Cup finals. He was chosen on both the GAA Team of the Century in 1984 and the Team of the Millennium in 2000.
His record of 64 appearances in championship games has yet to be equalled, while his tally of 33 goals and 208 points in these games was a record score which stood until the 1970s when it was surpassed by Eddie Keher. After one All-Ireland final in which Wexford defeated Cork, Bobby Rackard and his team-mate Nick O’Donnell shouldered Ring off the field.
He played his last championship match for Cork in 1962 but he continued to play for Glen Rovers. There was speculation in 1966 that Ring, at the age of 45, would come out of retirement to play for Cork in the All-Ireland final that year but it didn’t happen. He retired from the game altogether in 1967 at the age of 47.
Paddy Downey of The Irish Times wrote of him: “If hurling were an international sport his name and fame would stand at least alongside the reputations of Pele in soccer, Bradman in cricket, Edwards and Kyle in rugby, Nicklaus and Palmer in golf.”
A non-smoker and non-drinker throughout his life, Christy Ring was also deeply religious. Before big championship matches a holy candle was always lit in the local church and he always returned home for evening mass following the games. He continued his involvement in hurling as a selector for the Glen Rovers and Cork teams.
On March 2, 1979, he suffered a massive heart attack and died. His funeral was one of the biggest ever seen in Cork with up to 60,000 people lining the streets. The graveside oration in Cloyne was delivered by a former team-mate and the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch.
He has been commemorated by a life-size statue in his native village of Cloyne, and the Christy Ring Bridge over the River Lee. In 2006 a life-sized statue of him was unveiled outside the arrivals wing at Cork airport.
Quote
“I always liked to do the impossible.”
Books
Christy Ring, by Val Dorgan (Ward River Press, 1980).
Christy Ring: Hurling’s Greatest, by Tim Horgan (The Collins Press, 2007).