Coughlan and Christy Ring

In an extract from his memoir ‘Everything: The Denis Coughlan Autobiography’ the former Cork dual star, and winner of five All-Irelands and four All-Stars, recalls his relationship with friend, teammate and mentor Christy Ring on the 100th anniversary of the legend’s birth

WHEN I WAS a child, people like Jack Lynch and Christy Ring were Gods.

I remember Garvey’s Bridge, it was halfway between Blackpool and where the old Glen Rovers pitch used to be – in the country, really. Some of us, when we were boys, would go up there on summer evenings and we used to wait under the bridge just to see the senior Glen players coming up. They would walk up or cycle up to the pitch to train.

In fact, Christy Ring was the only person with a car, mainly because he was living in Cloyne at the time and it was the only way he could get to training. His car was an old Ford Anglia. So, he might leave his car in Blackpool and then walk up with another player – all the players would make their way up the hill to the Glen field in twos or threes.

And myself and my friends used to ask them if we could carry their hurleys up to the pitch. I’m sure they were embarrassed by this – I know I would’ve been embarrassed when I became a senior hurler – but we did it anyway and they humoured us. It was a big treat – that’s how innocent children were those days. And then we used to go behind the goals while they were training and hit the ball back out to them.

Of course, Christy Ring was the foremost hurler at that time, not only in the Glen, not only in Cork but in Ireland, so you had to be very brave to ask Christy to carry his hurley. But that was only because we were shy of him – it wasn’t anything to do with him – it was our shyness.I ended up playing with Christy for four years, and he was at the end of his career and I was at the beginning of mine.

But I felt very privileged to have hurled alongside him for Glen Rovers. The first occasion I was on a team with him was in 1964 and I played with him up to ’67 – I think his last game for the Glen was against UCC. And, of course, I watched him closely in training and in matches to learn as much as I could. But I didn’t really know him that well when he was a player – we never really had a meaningful conversation, to be honest. It was only later that I got to know him better.

When I did get to know him, years later, I realised that he was a very shy person. If you didn’t know him, he could appear aloof or haughty, but in reality it was shyness.

In all honesty, Christy was also one of the nicest people I ever met – you couldn’t meet a nicer man. And he was the kindest man as well. Christy used to talk about himself in the third person but it was in no way egotistical, it was just a habit he had.

He looked at things differently from other people, hurling especially. He saw things that other people didn’t see. He saw something in me that I didn’t see – that was for sure. And he knew me so well.

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH Christy changed in 1972 in unusual circumstances. That year I was playing with the Cork hurlers and we were in the Munster final against Clare. And on the Friday before the match – this would have been late in July – I pulled into the garage at the top of the Monaghan Road to get petrol. And Christy was in the garage before me getting petrol as well. It was around one o’clock in the day.That time I was living in Blackrock and Christy was living in Ballintemple just up the road. My office was not very far from where Christy was working.

Those days you could go home from work for what we called our dinner and I guess myself and Christy were doing just that when we met in the garage. He had a red Cortina at the time, 25 DRI.

While we were both getting petrol, he said to me, ‘What kind of a hurley do you have for Sunday?’
And for some strange reason I had my hurley in the boot of my car. This was unusual because I was very finicky about my hurleys. I minded them religiously and I wouldn’t have my good hurley in the car for love nor money in case anything happened to it – my hurleys were that important to me.

I said, ‘Here, I’ll show you,’ and I took my hurley out of the boot and handed it to him. And whatever he did to the hurley, he broke it in half. His own hurleys were heavy as far as I remember and strong whereas my one was light – I preferred them light – and he must have misjudged its strength. I think he might have been testing the spring or something, but whatever he did, the hurley ended up in bits.
‘Christy!’ I said, in shock. ‘What are you after doing?’

This was three days before a Munster final, remember. And as soon as I spoke, I regretted what I’d said. He was very upset, I could see it in him. He went pale when the hurley broke.

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he said, the two bits of the hurley in his hands.

‘No, of course I won’t,’ I said, shame-faced.

‘Do you know what you’ll do?’ Christy said. ‘Go on away home and have your dinner and I’ll sort this out.’I said I couldn’t, that I’d have go and get a hurley for the match straightaway.

I used to get my hurleys handmade to my own specification by a Mr McCarthy in Glanmire. Coincidently he used to make Christy’s hurleys too, but Christy wasn’t playing any more by ’72. Now, Mr McCarthy used to make only 10 or so hurleys a year so I thought I wouldn’t have a hope of getting a good one in time for Sunday – a total disaster.

‘Go on away,’ says Christy,‘Go down home and then back to work and I’ll call to your office at four o’clock and I’ll have a new hurley you can use on Sunday.’

I didn’t have the heart to contradict him, so I drove home to Blackrock and Margaret was there with my dinner ready. I told her I couldn’t eat anything, I would just have a glass of milk. I told her I had to leave immediately to go straight down to Glanmire and get a new hurley because I broke my own and I needed to get a replacement.

So, I went back out the front door and who was standing there only Christy.

‘I thought I told you to stay at home and have your dinner and I would bring your hurley to your office at four o’clock?’ says he.
Didn’t he follow me home without me knowing it. He knew I wasn’t going to do what I was told and I got caught. Now, when Christy Ring told you to do something related to hurling, you did it. I had no choice but to nod and go back into the house, and eat a meal I didn’t have the stomach for.

But he was as good as his word and at four o’clock he arrived into my office with a hurley identical to the ones that I always used. It was perfect, in fairness. Panic over.

‘There you are, now,’ says he. ‘That will bring you luck on Sunday.’ And I said thanks very much and I was very grateful.

WE PLAYED CLARE on the Sunday, two days later, in Thurles and we were on fire. I think Charlie McCarthy, Ray Cummins and Seanie O’Leary all scored two goals each the same day. We were well ahead in the second-half, and the game was as good as over long before the final whistle. Michael Ellard said the next day that if it had been a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it long before the end. I wish he had.

I think we were winning by 18 points – it was that one-sided – when disaster struck for me.

I was playing centrefield and midway through the second-half Séamus Durack, the Clare goalkeeper, pucked the ball out and it landed between myself and my marker in the middle of the field. We both went for the ball in the air and we both missed it. As the ball hopped on the ground and rose up again, I turned to flick it, and I made contact with the ball. But my hurley, in the follow-through, struck my opponent on the head. I think he was one of the few players on the pitch (if not the only one) wearing a helmet the same day and I could clearly hear the sound of my hurley hitting the helmet – it made a kind of a plasticky sound. And he went down.

It was beside the sideline and the nearby Clare mentors and officials immediately made a bit of a fuss. The referee was Sean O’Grady from Limerick. I think it might have been his first Munster final. Now, Sean is a very nice man and he was a very good referee. And he saw what happened and he said to me, ‘Denis that’s okay, that’s an accident. I saw what happened’.

But the Clare player stayed down and the Clare officials convinced Sean to send me off. So, he changed his mind and he did send me off. The only sending off of my career. In fact, I think it might have been the only time I was ever spoken to by a referee. I don’t think I was ever booked, either. Anyway, off I had to go and of course the lad I was marking got up immediately and played on. But I was gone.

I was suspended for a month – that was the automatic suspension those days. It didn’t really matter why you were sent off. You were suspended for a month automatically from all games and that was that. No suspensions were ever rescinded in the ‘60s and ‘70s, whatever the referee’s report. However, suspensions could be longer and there was a minimum six-month suspension for ‘striking an opponent with a hurley’.

So, I had to sweat it out until I would know whether or not I’d be eligible for the All-Ireland final. And that’s if we got to the final in the first place. But the county board secretary, Con Murphy still had to make a case to Croke Park and try to ensure the minimum suspension – which is what I received. In fairness to Sean O’Grady, he didn’t accuse me of deliberately striking an opponent.

BESIDES THE BROKEN hurley event in 1972, the first time I had a long conversation with Christy was in 1974. Margaret and I had taken a house in Fountainstown for a month during the summer. It was to give the children a holiday. Jonathan and Mags were quite small.

During that time – in fact it was in May, 1974 – Cork had just won the National Hurling League. We played Limerick in the final and they were All- Ireland champions and it was a fantastic match. I was working in Dublin and the final was played in Limerick on the 5th of May. So, I took the train down. In the dressing-room before the game we discovered that four players had cried off injured, including Ray Cummins and Mick Malone. This greatly depleted our team. There were over 25,000 people at the game. Limerick were flying high and there was a huge crowd there to support them, but – depleted or not – we beat them by 6-15 to 1-12. Éamonn O’Donoghue from Blackrock got three goals the same day, and the whole team just clicked.

As a result of that win we were immediately installed as favourites to win the All-Ireland in 1974 and we were playing Waterford in the first round of the championship. The match was below in Walsh Park in Waterford which was always a very difficult place in which to perform. It’s a tight pitch and Waterford are a very different proposition playing there. Waterford were always an enigma to me, because you never knew what to expect – which Waterford would turn up – but they were always very physical (in a good, clean, way) and I felt we could never play to our best ability against them. Somehow, they could prevent that, especially in Walsh Park, and they did that in 1974 and beat us – deservedly so.

It was a very tight game on a sunny day and with about 10 minutes left, the teams were level. A low ball came into the Cork goalmouth and our goalkeeper, Paddy Barry moved out to block it on his hurley. But didn’t the Waterford forward, Martin Geary get there ahead of him and flick the ball into the goal, breaking Paddy’s hurley in the same movement. Paddy picked up the broken end of his hurley and in disgust he flung it into the net. Or so he intended. Didn’t the umpire walk in front of the goal at the same time to wave the green flag and Paddy’s hurley-end hit him on the thigh. The man had to be taken off and brought to hospital. And Paddy was sent off – by Sean O’Grady, would you believe, who had sent me off two years previously.

With the extra man Waterford held their lead and beat us by four points – a major shock. Cork, the favourites for the All-Ireland, were gone, sensationally beaten in the first round of the Munster Championship. That’s the way it was before the so-called back door.

I had travelled that morning to Waterford with Christy Ring because he and his family were also staying in Fountainstown for the summer. He had picked me up outside our front door and driven me to the match. He wasn’t a selector or anything, he was just going to the game.
We headed back to Cork immediately afterwards, crestfallen. And in the car, I said something like, ‘You know, now that we’re gone, I hope Waterford win it out now… win the All-Ireland.’

Christy shook his head. He believed that it was just as important that the ‘strong’ counties kept winning All-Irelands, in order to keep the standard of the game up.

I didn’t actually agree with him at the time but subsequently I have changed my view and I can see the truth in what he said. If hurling is lost in the heartlands it will fade away. Since hurling does not have that many counties – certainly not as many as football – it needs to be vibrant in the traditionally strong counties.

That isn’t to say hurling should not be developed and promoted in the so- called weaker counties, and I was delighted when Offaly, Wexford and Clare made their breakthrough in subsequent years. But it must stay strong in Kilkenny, Cork, Tipperary, Limerick and Galway or it will come under threat.

Arguably it is already under threat, to all kinds of forces, inside and outside of sport – in Cork, particularly.

*‘Everything: The Denis Coughlan Autobiography’ (with Tadhg Coakley) is published by Hero Books and is available in all good book shops and also online (print or ebook) on Amazon, Apple and all quality digital stores.