Golfer Philomena Garvey was born on April 26, 1927, in Baltray, Co Louth, daughter of James and Kathleen Garvey (née Owens). She dominated Irish women’s golf for a period of 25 years after the Second World War, winning the Close Championship a record 15 times, starting at Lahinch in 1946. This was a particularly notable occasion for the Baltray club in that the runner-up, Clarrie Reddan, was also a member.
An indication of her dominance of Irish golf is that she never lost a final, which meant the only hope her rivals had of a breakthrough was that she would be beaten unexpectedly in one of the earlier rounds. Her greatest sequence of Irish Championship triumphs was four in a row, from 1957 to 1960, though she had earlier completed hat-trick successes in 1948 and 1955.
A fine and powerful striker of the ball with both woods and irons, she was one of the few top women golfers of her time to use the inter-lock grip.
She became a controversial figure in 1958 when informing the organisers of the biennial British and Irish Curtis Cup team that she would not wear the Union Jack emblem on her blazer. This became a serious issue, not least for the fact that she had been a member of every team from 1948 until 1956  and had captured the British Ladies Championship in 1957.
By way of compromise, she offered to wear the old badge which incorporated the emblems of the four home countries, but the Ladies Golf Union (LGU) refused to budge on the issue. So the Union Jack was retained and Philomena Garvey didn’t play. But she had made her point and when she was chosen again on the Curtis Cup side in 1960, the badge was changed.
In sharp contrast to her Irish exploits, she had to endure near-misses in the British Championship in which she lost five finals. Of these, the 1960 decider was especially memorable. Against the American Barbara McIntyre she came from eight down to cover the next six holes in a stunning 20 strokes, winning five of them before eventually losing by 4 and 2.
A lifetime member of Co Louth GC, she lived close by in Termonfeckin. She was employed for most of her working life in the sports department of Clerys in O’Connell Street, Dublin.
Though she flirted with professional ranks from 1964, she regained her amateur status in 1968 and won her last Irish Championship two years later. She has been described by the golf writer Dermot Gilleece as “quite simply, the greatest woman golfer this country has produced”.
Philomena Garvey died on May 5, 2009, aged 82.
Biography
Philomena Garvey: Queen of the Irish Fairways, by Paul Garvey, The Liffey Press. ISBN 978-1-905785-71-1

Harry Thuillier Snr.

Harry Thuillier was born in Dublin on September 13,1922, one of six children of Joseph Thuillier and his wife Mary (née Daly). He was educated at St Patrick’s national school, Drumcondra, and St Vincent’s secondary school, Glasnevin.
He and his siblings were members of the Achilles Fencing Club and his competitive record was impressive – 14 national foil titles, the sabre title twice and two epee championships. He represented Ireland in the individual foil events at the Olympic Games in 1952 and 1960.
One of his outstanding fencing bouts was in 1954 when he crossed swords with the Swede Baron Rehbinder, Helsinki Olympics finalist, at the Irish open championship in Cork. He also was Irish table tennis champion from 1944 to 1950.
In his 20s he spent three years in England learning the basics of the leather tanning business. He returned to Ireland in 1950 and by the mid-1950s he was the advertising salesman for the Irish Catholic.
Eventually he went into business for himself, producing and presenting sponsored programmes on RTÉ radio. He was best known for programmes such as Come Fly With Me, in which he interviewed passengers on Aer Lingus flights, Tayto Quiz and Murrays’ Musical Memories. He also presented Ireland’s Top Ten.
He was the originator and presenter of the first dedicated sports programme on Raidió Éireann. A children’s programme, Junior Sports Magazine , first went on air in 1955 and mainly covered rugby, hockey and athletics. Up to then sports coverage was confined to match commentaries and separate GAA and soccer results programmes.
In July 1962, he was a guest on the first ever Late, Late Show on RTE, along with Danny Cummins, Verona Mullen and Prof Liam Ó Briain.
In 1979 he helped found the first Lions Club with an exclusive sporting membership, serving the Sandymount-Irishtown-Ringsend area of Dublin. He was a former chairman of the Fencing Federation of Ireland.
Harry Thuillier died on April 26, 2011. He was predeceased by his son Harry jnr, the photographer, in 1997. He is survived by his wife Frankie (Frances McDermott), and sons Nikki and Ian.

Lord Killanin was born Michael Morris in London on July 30, 1914. His father was an officer in the Irish Guards who died in action in the year of his son’s birth, and his mother was Australian. In 1927, while a schoolboy, he succeeded his uncle as Baron Killanin, of Spiddal, Co Galway. Educated at Eton, the Sorbonne, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, he boxed, rowed and played rugby at school, but his greatest sporting love was horse-racing.

Lord Killanin

In 1935 he became a reporter on the Daily Express in the heyday of the Beaverbrook era. He then moved to the Daily Mail, as a political correspondent. By 1937 he was covering the China-Japan conflict, and thereafter was appointed political and diplomatic correspondent. He also wrote for the Sunday Dispatch.
Lord Killanin volunteered for military service in the British forces in 1938, and during the Second World War served with the Queen’s Westminsters and the 30th Armoured Brigade; he was rewarded with appointment as a military MBE for his role in the Normandy landing in 1944.
In 1945 he returned to Ireland, where he had spent his childhood, marrying Sheila Dunlop, daughter of the rector of Oughterard in Co Galway in 1945. and they had three sons, Redmond (film producer), John (photographer) and Michael (the racehorse trainer “Mouse”) and a daughter, Deborah. He instigated the reconstruction of the family seat in Spiddal. He also owned a townhouse in Elgin Road, Dublin. He became involved in film production and worked as producer on Irish movies directed by John Ford such as The Rising of the Moon (1957)  and Gideon’s Day (1958).
He is best known for his collaboration with Ford on the John Wayne classic The Quiet Man (1952), the tale of a boxer returning to his native village and of his romance with a local girl played by Maureen O’Hara. The film helped create a sentimental image and international affection for rural Irish life that contributed hugely to building tourism in the west of Ireland.
Also at this period he wrote a biography of the 18th-century portrait painter and court artist to King George I, Sir Godfrey Kneller (Sir Godfrey Kneller and His Times 1646-1723, 1948). He later published The Shell Guide to Ireland (1975) with Professor Michael Duignan of UCG, and My Ireland (1987).
His role as a sports administrator began in 1950 when he was appointed President of the Olympic Council of Ireland, joining the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1952. He assumed the presidency of the body in succession to the American Avery Brundage in 1972, immediately after the Munich tragedy, and held the post until 1980.
His IOC period witnessed the expulsion of the Austrian skier Karl Schranz in 1972, and the exclusion of the team from Ian Smith’s Rhodesia when faced with a boycott by black African states. The 1976 games in Montreal saw an African and Asian boycott in opposition to the participation of New Zealand, which had maintained rugby contacts with South Africa during the apartheid regime.
Lord Killanin managed to uphold the Olympic spirit amid the fierce strains imposed by the American and British government opposition to the Moscow Games in 1980, in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. It was his greatest battle, prevailing perhaps against the odds in protecting the games against the joint efforts of President Jimmy Carter and Margaret Thatcher.
By the time of his retirement he was already fearful of the danger to athletics from the rising use of performance-enhancing drugs, initially in the Eastern bloc but soon a global problem. He wrote about this and other dilemmas in his autobiography, My Olympic Years (1983).
In his latter years he was a familiar sight at Irish AGMs as a director of the brewers Beamish and Crawford, the tobacco manufacturers Gallahers, Lombard and Ulster Bank and Irish Shell.
A member of the Irish Turf Club from 1971, he also served on a variety of State bodies including a commission on thoroughbred horse breeding between 1982 and 1986. He chaired the Dublin Theatre Festival from 1958 to 1970, and Dublin’s National Heritage Council from 1987. In 1950 he had been a founding member of the pioneering environmental group An Taisce which sustained a long defence of Georgian architecture in Dublin. He played a notable part in the development of Irish horse racing, and in particular his beloved annual Galway Races festival.
Lord Killanin died in Dublin on April 25, 1999, and was buried in the family vault in Galway.

John Patrick McManus was born on March 10, 1951, in Limerick. His love of horses was acquired from his late father, Johnny, who kept show jumpers. He was educated at the Christian Brothers School on Sexton Street.
“I used to study the horses in the papers and I would always try and have a bet on in the big races. It was a problem, as I was too young to go into a betting office and I wasn’t too big for my age either,” he told the Limerick Leader years later.

JP McManus

McManus began his business career at his family’s earth-moving business, and then became a bookmaker at Limerick’s greyhound track, the Market’s Field. Success as an oncourse bookie enabled him to buy his own racehorses, which led to backing and laying horses on the advice of his associate Jimmy Hayes. He also became an accomplished backgammon player.
In 1982, he and his wife, Noreen, a former nurse, bought Martinstown Stud on over 400 acres in Co Limerick from the McCalmont family. He is now jump racing’s largest owner with over 400 horses in training. His first really big win was a horse called Mister Donovan at Cheltenham. His early exploits in the betting ring earned him the nickname “The Sundance Kid”. From 1999, he enjoyed a very public battle with infamous Scottish bookmaker “Fearless” Freddie Williams. On 16 March 2006, McManus won in excess of £1 million from Williams at the Cheltenham Festival.
The most famous of his horses is Istabraq, a three-time winner of the Champion Hurdle trained by Aidan O’Brien. Tony McCoy is retained as his stable jockey. Former champion jockey Jonjo O’Neill trains some of his horses at the Jackdaws Castle facility which McManus helped finance. His horses run in the green and gold colours of the South Liberties GAA club.
His horse Don’t Push It, ridden by McCoy and trained by O’Neill, won the 2010 Aintree Grand National. While he is well known to racing fans, he remains somewhat an enigma. He says he “rarely bets” these days and when he does he usually describes them as “little bets.” He says betting is “not an obsession.” He is featured in “High Rollers of the Turf”, by Raymond Smith.
He has profitable investments in propery and a significant part of his wealth comes from foreign exchange trading which he oversees from his office in Geneva, also his official residence. He also has a permanent suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel. He returns to Ireland regularly.
Currencies have been a speciality and his bets on currencies are bank-scale, always working on the advice of his friends Dermot Desmond and Joe Lewis. He now has a wide portfolio of investments from leisure centres and betting shops to pubs and nursing homes. He is a large shareholder in Ladbrokes.
He part owns the luxury Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados which he acquired in 1997 with Dermot Desmond amd John Magnier for around €60m, with a reported further €280m spent on renovations. (Tiger Woods got married at the Sandy Lane).
He bought a 28.9% stake in Manchester United with John Magnier. In 2005 both men sold their shares in the club to US businessman Malcolm Glazer for €330m, making a reported profit of €130m.
He also profited to the tune of €33m from the €208m sale of the Standard Chartered Bank in London in 2006.
Other investments included his interests in the Next Generation leisure clubs, which he owned with Magnier and Desmond. The clubs were auctioned off for €300m in 2006 to London & Regional (L&R), a UK property firm. This sale netted McManus over €18m for his 14.4% stake, once company debts were accounted for.
In 2010 it was revealed He and John Magnieer had secretly built stakes in Mitchells & Butlers, a listed pub company which owns the All Bar One and Harvester chains.
In 2004, McManus set up Sporting Limerick, which sponsors Limerick GAA teams.
A dedicated philanthropist, McManus has been responsible for raising at least €50m for charity.
In 2006, he built a €120 million residence on his 400 acre Martinstown Stud farm in Co. Limerick.
A keen golfer, he organised the Invitation Pro-Am golf tournament in Adare, Co Limerick, in 2005 and 2010, to raise funds for Limerick charities. Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington and Tony McCoy (caddie: Ruby Walsh) were among the personalities taking part. The event has raised €95 million to date
JP McManus’s personal fortune is estimated at €1.2 billion (£900 million) but at its peak was probably closer to €2 billion. Like many others McManus is reputed to have been affected by the economic downturn.
In 1996, he established the JP McManus Scholarship Award which provides €6,750 each year for third level education to eight selected students at his former secondary school C.B.S. Sexton Street in Limerick. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Limerick and has funded the new Kemmy Business School at the University. Jim Kemmy, a dogged socialist, was a close friend of McManus’s.

Although he lives abroad most of the time, he maintains very strong links with Limerick. “It is a delight that our children feel as strongly about our home place as we do and I look forward to spending many years of happiness in Limerick,” he said on being named Limerick Person of the Year in 2011.

Irked by criticism that he was a tax exile, he said in late 2011: “I didn’t leave the country in order to avoid paying a tax … I paid my taxes and I set up my business abroad.” He added: “Do they want you to come back and try and support the local economy, try to earn some money abroad and then put it in the local economy. That’s what I like to do.”

McManus was diagnosed with cancer in late 2008 and received treatment in the USA. He is said to be coping well. He is married to Noreen and they have three children.

Born on February 12, 1930, in Holycross, Co Tipperary, John Doyle was regarded as one of the greatest defenders in hurling. An only child, whose mother died in the week of his birth, he was raised by his father on the family farm. He was educated at the local St. Michael’s national school in Holycross, and later attended Thurles CBS. From an early age he showed a great interest in hurling. He came to prominence as a minor, helping Tipperary to an All-Ireland title in 1947. The following year, he helped his club, Holycross-Ballycahill.
In a top-class senior county career which began at the age of 19 in 1949 and continued until his retirement after an All-Ireland defeat by Kilkenny 18 years later, John Doyle won eight All-Ireland medals (a feat he shares with Christy Ring), 11 National Leagues medals and ten Munster titles. He was later voted into the GAA’s Hall of Fame, Team of the Century and Team of the Millennium. He is one of only a handful of players to have won All-Ireland medals in three separate decades.
His mastery of the shoulder tackle (he was six feet tall), allied to an above average number of deliveries out of defence, marked him apart. Collectively, with fellow inner-defenders, Michael Maher (Holycross) and Kieran Carey (Roscrea), he completed a very formidable trio as Tipperary’s last line of defence for a ten year period from the late 1950s. Their marshalling of territory in front of goal was famously known as “Hell’s Kitchen” because of the often tempestuous nature of the exchanges which greeted the dropping ball arriving from mid-field.
Hurling was a different game in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, wrote Sean Ryan in the Sunday Independent, with forwards allowed to rush the goalkeeper and put him into the net  As a result, the first duty of defenders such as John Doyle was to defend their ‘keeper.
“In the Munster final of 1960, Doyle and Cork forward Paddy Barry had a great scrap. They put down their hurleys and adopted the Marquess of Queensberry rules, while the referee ignored them and the play went on around them. It was the proverbial Munster final where the ball went out of play, but the match went on.”
After his playing career ended, Doyle served Tipperary as a selector and Central Council delegate. He also entered politics, running unsuccessfully for Fianna Fáil in the 1969 and ’73 general elections and spending the interim years in the Seanad, to which he was elected on the agricultural panel.
He died on December 28, 2010. He is survived by his wife Anne, two sons and five daughters. His sons, Johnny and Michael, played for Tipperary at all levels, and Michael, who won a Munster title with Tipperary in 1987, was manager of the county hurling team.

Trainer Paddy Mullins

Patrick Mullins was born into a farming family at Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny, on January 28 1919. He was educated locally and at the De La Salle Brothers at Bagenalstown. He would cycle four miles to the school every day.
The family was steeped in the world of hunting and point-to-points, and, after a spell as an amateur jockey, Paddy began training pointers before taking over his father’s licence when he was 34. His first winner as a trainer was Flash Parade, at Punchestown, on April 29 1953.
His first big winner on the flat came with Height O’ Fashion in the Irish Cesarewitch in 1962. In 1967 he sent out Vulpine to win the Irish Grand National, taking the race again the following year with Herring Gull. He went on to win the race again with Dim Wit (1972) and Luska (1981).
Mullins’s career on the Flat and over the jumps spanned 52 years. He was champion Irish National Hunt trainer in Ireland on ten occasions, and in 1984 became only the third Irish trainer to send out 100 winners.
Among his big race victories were two successive Ladbroke Hurdles at Leopardstown (1989 and 1990) with Redundant Pal. As recently as 2003 he took the Irish Oaks, with Vintage Tipple, ridden by Frankie Dettori. After the race, the voluble Italian told the trainer: “I liked the instructions you gave me, boss – none.”
He will forever be associated in the minds of racegoers with the great mare Dawn Run, the only horse to win both the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup at Cheltenham.
A brave front-runner, Dawn Run won the Champion Hurdle in 1984. Two years later she added the Gold Cup after an epic struggle with Forgive ‘n’ Forget and Wayward Lad, entering the winners’ enclosure amid scenes of ecstatic celebration.
On both occasions she was ridden by Jonjo O’Neill, an arrangement insisted upon by the horse’s owner, Charmian Hill, a formidable horsewoman labelled by the tabloids “the galloping granny”.
Although Paddy’s son, Tony, was Dawn Run’s regular jockey (and had once ridden her to six successive victories), Charmian Hill insisted that O’Neill partner the horse on certain big race occasions.
This may have been why Mullins later admitted that, after the Gold Cup, he had felt no emotion at all; and he would always say that he was more proud of sending out Hurry Harriet to win the Champion Stakes at 33-1 in 1973. “It was the highlight of my career,” he declared, “as she beat the best filly in Europe, Allez France.”
Dawn Run, who also won the Irish and French Champion Hurdles, died in the summer of 1986, just months after her Gold Cup triumph, when falling at Auteuil under a French jockey, Michel Chirol.
There were happier Cheltenham moments for Mullins when his eldest son, Willie, rode Hazy Dawn and Mack’s Friendly to win big amateur events, while Herring Gull (1968 RSA Chase) and Counsel Cottage (1977 SunAlliance Hurdle) also scored at the festival. Paddy Mullins retired in 2005, handing over the licence to his son Tom.
A reticent and diffident man, Mullins seldom gave interviews. The racing commentator Tony O’Hehir observed: “He dealt with them like someone gingerly escaping from a minefield, and the impression he gave was always of someone who just wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else.”
Mullins married Maureen in 1954. The couple combined their eforts to put their Doninga stable firmly on the map, Paddy concentrating on the horses and Maureen looking after administration and liaising with the owners — not to mention scoring locally at Gowran Park on her sole outing race-riding. They also bred and raced many winners under both rules over the years in Maureen’s colours, with that prolific scorer Grabel one of their best standard-bearers when landing the $750,000 Duelling Grounds Hurdle in America.
They had five children who have continued the family tradition in racing. Willie Mullins became Irish champion trainer and won the Aintree Grand National in 2005 with Hedgehunter. Tom, Tony and Sandra also train, while George runs a horse transport business. All five won at least one race under rules of racing.
Tony Mullins said at the time of his death: “Everyone knows he was a great trainer, but he was an even greater family man. He was certainly the greatest family man I ever knew and we all stayed around him and trained within five miles of home. The family has always been very unified and he kept it that way all his life. He taught us all we know – whatever we know.”
Frankie Dettori fondly remembered Vintage Tipple’s victory in the Irish Oaks and said: “Obviously I had heard of Paddy but I had never met him until the day. He had a great aura about him and he didn’t give me any instructions. He said I had been riding horses all my life and left it to me.”
Paddy Mullins died on October 28, 2010, aged 91.

Moss Keane. “A man of few airs and many graces”.

Although he didn’t start playing rugby until he was in his early 20s, Moss Keane became one of Ireland’s most successful and popular rugby players. Less than four years after taking up the game, he was playing for Ireland in Paris in 1974, the first of 51 Irish caps in an international career that lasted 11 seasons. An imposing second row, he was never dropped by his country.
Maurice Ignatius (Moss) Keane, was born on July 27, 1948, one of three sons of Willie and Cissie Keane, and grew up on the family farm at Currow, Co Kerry. He played Gaelic football at St Brendan’s College, Killarney, and at University College, Cork. He played full-back for Kerry at under-21 level and captained the UCC tream. He won three Sigerson Cup medals playing with UCC. In those days, the GAA’s ban on “foreign” sports, which included rugby, was still in place.
So when Moss Keane was invited by a fellow student to play in an inter-faculty rugby match in 1970, he used the name “Moss Fenton”. It was only when the ban was lifted the following year that he played rugby regularly. “When the ban went, I could play any game I wanted,” Keane recalled in 2005. “I was asked by the rugby crowd. I had seen the game on television and reckoned you did not need to be a rocket scientist to be a second row.”
Moss Keane rose swiftly through the rugby ranks. In his second full season as a senior player, he played for Munster in a 3-3 draw against New Zealand. Before the match, Munster coach Noel Murphy famously told him: “Moss, you are no longer an experiment, you are a Munster man picked to play the All Blacks . . . Just go out and cause mayhem. Disrupt their lineout. Stop them getting quick ball. Stand up for yourself and your team. Kerrymen have won more All-Irelands than anyone else – you’re afraid of no one. Kerry are the All Blacks of Ireland. That’s why we picked you.”
Hemade his debut for Ireland the following year. His international career coincided with the national side’s revival. Ireland won their first Five Nations title for 25 years in 1974, and in 1982 clinched the Triple Crown for the first time since 1949.
In all he was capped 51 times for Ireland, he was a member of the team that won the Triple Crown and Five Nations championship in 1982. He was also capped for the British and Irish Lions, playing 12 tour games including a Test match on the 1977 tour of New Zealand.
The sport enjoyed a new popularity. Rugby had been seen by many in Ireland as not only an exclusive, middle-class sport, brought to the country by English public schoolboys in the 1850s. Moss Keane, a farmer’s son from the heart of the nation, helped change that perception.
“Moss almost single-handedly brought rugby to a whole new audience,” said the former Ireland international Tony Ward.
Moss Keane, who was known for his foot-pumping bursts with ball in hand, played hard and enjoyed the camaraderie off the field that rugby was then renowned for.
When he toured New Zealand with the 1977 Lions, he played in the first Test despite having been concussed four days earlier. He had revealed his renowned wit earlier on the tour when asked for his comments after a game. “The first half was even,” he said. “The second half was even worse.”
In 1981 he was one of a group of players who refused to travel on Ireland’s tour of South Africa in opposition to apartheid.
Ciarán Fitzgerald, who captained Ireland in 1982, said: “He was a giant in every way; he was a giant physically and a giant mentally – he was as clever as a whip, and I’d say nobody had a bigger heart.”
The former England and Lions hooker Peter Wheeler recalled being invited to stay with him in Kerry. “I flew in to Dublin and then caught a train,” he said. “Moss was going to meet me at the station, but was not there. It was late at night and I managed to find his house. A woman answered the door and when I asked if Moss Keane lived there, she replied: ‘Yes. Bring him in.’”
Keane gained a degree in dairy science, then a master’s, and moved to Dublin in 1973 to work for the Department of Agriculture. He played for Lansdowne until his retirement in 1985, often turning out for the club the day after playing for Ireland. His autobiography, Rucks, Mauls and Gaelic Football (2005), was a bestseller. He was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2008.
“He was one of Irish rugby’s greats, a player without peer,” said the journalist Edmund van Esbeck. His friend Con Houlihan accurately and affectionately summed him up as “a man of few airs and many graces”.
Moss died on October 5, 2010, aged 62. He is survived by his wife, Anne (nee Dunne), and his daughters, Sarah and Anne Marie, granddaughter Ellie and brothers Brian and Matt.

Alex 'huricane' Higgins. Flamboyant player.

Alex Higgins was born Alexander Gordon Higgins  in Belfast on March 18, 1949. He had three sisters. His father, who had been struck by a lorry as a boy and was unable to read or write, worked as a wheel tapper. His mother brought in extra money from her job as a cleaner.

He started playing snooker at the age of 11, often in the Jampot club in the Sandy Row area. At 14 he left for a career England as a jockey, working with trainer Eddie Reavey in Berkshire. However, he put on a lot of weight and was released without ever having ridden in public. He returned to Belfast and by 1965, aged 16, he had compiled his first maximum break. In 1968 he won the All-Ireland and Northern Ireland amateur snooker championships.

His speed around the table and flamboyant style earned him the nickname “Hurricane Higgins”, and made him a high-profile player. His highly unusual technique sometimes included a body swerve and movement when cueing, as well as a stance that was higher than for most professionals. While he was arguably a classic example of how not to cue, he nevertheless managed to pot balls better than most. He also drank and smoked during tournaments.

Alex Higgins turned professional at the age of 22, winning the World Snooker Championship at his first attempt in 1972 against John Spencer, making him the youngest winner of the title until Stephen Hendry’s 1990 victory at the age of 21. He again reached the final, in April 1976, losing to Ray Reardon, and was also runner-up to Cliff Thorburn in 1980. However, he won his second title in 1982 after beating Reardon 18–15 (with a 135 total clearance in the final frame); it was an emotional as well as professional victory for him. He would have been ranked No 1 in the world rankings for the 1982/83 season had he not forfeited ranking points following disciplinary action.

A volatile personality got him into frequent fights and arguments, both on and off the snooker table. One of the most serious of these clashes was when he head-butted a referee at the UK championship in 1986. This led to him being fined £12,000 and banned from five tournaments. Another came at the 1990 world championship; after losing his first-round match to Steve James, he punched tournament official Colin Randle in the stomach before the start of a press conference at which he announced his retirement. This, added to his having threatened to have Dennis Taylor “shot”, led to a ban for the whole of the following season.
He had threatened the Catholic Denis Taylor: “I come from Shankhill and you come from Coalisland” he said, “and the next time you are in Northern Ireland I will have you shot.”
While revered by his millions of fans, as a sportsman he left much to be desired. If he lost, there was always an excuse. The cloth was the wrong pace; his cue was badly balanced; the temperature was too cold; the walls were painted the wrong colour; the referee was standing too close. It hardly mattered what was amiss, so long as Alex Higgins was not at fault.
His  unorthodox yet effective play was perhaps best encapsulated in his break of 69, made under unusual pressure, against Jimmy White in the penultimate frame of their World Professional Snooker Championship semi-final in 1982. Alex  was 0–59 down in that frame and probably one ball away from going out, but managed to compile an extremely challenging clearance during which he was scarcely in position until the colours.
Former world champion Dennis Taylor recalls a three-quarter-ball pot on a blue into the green pocket especially memorable, not only for its extreme degree of difficulty but for enabling Higgins to continue the break and keep White off the table and unable to clinch victory at that moment.

In the TV documentary The Story of Snooker (2002), Steve Davis considered Higgins the “one true genius that snooker has produced”, despite the autobiography of his contemporary fellow professional Willie Thorne criticising Higgins as “not a great player”. Higgins arguably fulfilled this potential only intermittently during his career peak in the 1970s and 80s.
Alex Higgins was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997. He  returned to competitive action in September 2007 at the VC Poker Irish Professional Championship in Dublin but was whitewashed 5–0 by former British Open champion Fergal O’Brien in the first round.
He continued to play, enjoyed “hustling” for drink money in clubs in Northern Ireland and beyond against allcomers; and in May 2009 he entered the Northern Ireland amateur championship, “to give it a crack”, but failed to appear for his match.

Alex Higgins was an inspiration to many of today’s professional snooker players including Ken Doherty and Ronnie O’Sullivan who, in an interview, stated: “Alex was an inspiration to players like Jimmy White and thousands of snooker players all over the country, including me. The way he played at his best is the way I believe the game should be played. It was on the edge, keeping the crowd entertained and glued to the action.”

It is estimated that he earned and mostly spent a £3 million fortune over twenty years. However, besides his throat cancer, he continued to struggle with financial problems and drunkenness. He also admitted to using cocaine and marijuana.
Alex Higgins was twice married, first to an Australian called Cara. “She was the daughter of a racehorse trainer, so she had lots of money,” he explained. “I’m sure she would say our five-year spell together was very pleasant.” What Cara actually said was “That lunatic has beaten me up.”
In 1980 he married Lynn Robbins and they had son and a daughter.

By 1987 he had acquired a new girlfriend called Siobhan Kidd, an art restorer and psychology graduate, who described him in 1988 as “the gentlest man I have ever met”. Two years later she was telling police how he had held her down and broken her cheekbone by striking her with a hairdryer.

At the end of his life he was an alcoholic and more or less destitute; he had lost his home in Cheshire and was living in sheltered accommodation in Belfast. In April 2010, his friends announced that they had set up a campaign to help raise the £20,000 he needed for teeth implants, to enable him to eat properly again and put on weight. Higgins lost his teeth after intensive radiotherapy used to treat his throat cancer. It was reported that since losing them he had been living on liquid food, and had become increasingly depressed.

He published his autobiography, From the Eye of the Hurricane: My Story, in 2007.

Alex Higgins died at his Belfast home on July 24, 2010.

He once said -

“I’m a one-off, a mystery man that would drive the world’s most eminent psychiatrist to his consulting couch.”

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).

Dermot Earley. Sportsman and army leader.

Dermot Earley was born in Castlebar, Co Mayo, on February 24, 1948, one of five children of Peadar Earley and his wife Catherine (Kitty) Byrne. The family later moved to Gorthaganny, Co Roscommon, where his father took up a teaching post.
He was educated at the local national school and later attended St. Nathy’s College in Ballaghaderreen. After completing his Leaving Cert in 1965 He joined the Irish Army as a cadet and was commissioned in 1967, rising through a distinguished career to the post of Chief of Staff. His first posting was as a platoon commander in the Recruit Training Depot at the Curragh and in 1969 he was appointed an Instructor at the Army School of Physical Culture.
Dermot Earley was widely regarded as one of the greatest GAA footballer never to win a senior All Ireland medal. He first came to prominence at 15 as a member of the Roscommon minor football team in 1963, launching  an inter-county career spanning 22 years. As in the Army, he was regarded as a born leader on the football pitch.

As a footballer he was equally brilliant at midfield or centre-forward. At age 17 he was promoted to the Roscommon senior side, and won the first of five Connacht championship medals in 1972. In between, he won an All-Ireland under-21 medal in 1966 when Roscommon beat Kildare in the final.
Twice an All-Stars awards winner, he won a National League medal (1979), an All-Ireland runners’ up medal (1980) and two Railway Cup medals. He retired from inter-county football in 1985. At the end of his last game for Roscommon, against Mayo, he was carried shoulder high from the field by members of the Mayo team.
He played club football with Michael Glaveys in Roscommon and was later actively involved with Sarsfields of Newbridge, Co Kildare, where he lived.
He also played rugby, and in 1974 lined out with an Army team against Wanderers in an IRFU centenary celebration match at Lansdowne Road.
After he retired as a player he managed the Roscommon and Kildare county teams. He commented on club games for local radio even after he became Chief of Staff.

Army career
He completed a specialist Diploma Course with distinction, in physical education at St Mary’s College Strawberry Hill Twickenham in 1970/71. He is a graduate of the Royal College of Defence Studies London (2001) and holds a Master of Arts (Hons) in peace and development studies from the University of Limerick (1999). He had a variety of operational and administrative roles at Curragh Command, and completed the first Ranger course, which led to the establishment of special operations training and the formation of the Army Ranger Wing.
Following a period as assistant command adjutant at Curragh Command he was appointed school commandant of the ASPC. From 1983 to 1987 he was desk officer for overseas operations and later current operations in the chief-of-staff’s branch at Defence Forces headquarters.
He participated in overseas missions with the UN, including as a military observer in the Middle East and twice with Unifil, the UN mission to Lebanon. And from 1987 to 1991 he served as deputy military adviser to UN secretary general Javier Perez de Cuellar.
He was involved in negotiating an end to the Angolan civil war. Afterwards, at a dinner in Lisbon with Angolan leaders and international statesmen, he made a “passionate speech” about what the future held for Angola. A Portuguese academic and student of the peace process handed him a piece of paper with his summary of Earley’s speech. It simply said: “You have it. Don’t f**k it up.”
While serving with the UN up to 1991 he was a member of negotiating teams dealing with the Iraqis and Kuwaitis, and was a key adviser during the setting up of the UN’s mission in Kuwait – Unikom. On return from his UN duties in 1991,  he became an instructor at the Military College, and in the mid-1990s he helped establish the UN Training School Ireland in the college.
On his promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1995 he commanded the 27th Infantry Battalion on the Border, and worked in conciliation and arbitration and public relations at the Curragh.
He became a Colonel in 2001 and was promoted to Major-General in February 2004. He became Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces in April, 2007, and was responsible for the deployment of Irish troops in Chad - considered the most difficult of foreign peace missions ever undertaken by Irish troops.
He became ill in 2009 and retired on June 13, 2010.

One son, Dermot  jnr,  also an Army officer, like his father has two All Stars. Daughter Noelle also played football for Kildare and won an All Star.

Dermot Earley died on June 23, 2010 at the Drogheda Memorial Hospital on the Curragh, Co Kildare. He was survived by his mother Kitty, his wife Mary, and six children: David, Dermot, Conor, Paula, Ann-Marie and Noelle.