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Content Zone
Tue 13-Apr-2004 17:34
More from this writer..
Chronicles
'Come Back, Ringy, Come Back!'
Fair play to the genius in TG4 who so felicitously scheduled the classic Western
'Shane'
to immediately follow the documentary about Christy Ring, on Easter Monday night, writes An Fear Rua …
Like Ringy, Shane - as played by Alan Ladd - may have been small in stature, but he was a giant in every other way. Indeed, Ladd was
so
challenged in height that most of his kissing scenes with leading ladies had to be shot with the actor standing on an orange box, the better to reach those silky lips. That's something you could never accuse Ring of. He showed himself to be more than a match for the sultry Kim Novak when they were introduced at a Cork Film Festival during the early Sixties. In any event, if you were to make any such derogatory suggestion you'd be knocked flat be a belt of a hurley quicker than any gunslinger would have his weapon unholstered.
Kim was over promoting her film of Somerset Maugham's masterpiece
'Of Human Bondage'
, where her co-star was the rather tight-lipped Laurence Harvey. The movie has the distinction of being the first passed by the Irish censor permitting scenes of nudity. Most of the shots consisted of Kim with her back to camera. Nevertheless, cinemas up and down the country were packed out for weeks on end by optimistic punters ever hopeful of catching an eyeful of the unveiled pulchritude. On the first night in Cork, during the bedroom scene, a voice from the Gods shouted in awe: 'Jayz, she have a pair a' thighs on 'er like Donie Wallace!' - an approbatory comparison to one of Cork's other sporting heroes, he of Cork Celtic and soccer fame.
Like Shane, Ring often had to face, and overcome, impossible odds and re-invent himself after each confrontation. Again, like Shane, the Corkman was sometimes surrounded by a bunch of helpless sodbusters, fearful of taking on 'flash-of-the-ash' gunslingers like Limerick's Mick Mackey or Waterford's John Keane. The recurring theme of this marvellous Ring documentary was one of the man as mythical giant. The man who springs out of nowhere when all seems lost for Cork, then flashes a couple of bewildering goals to the back of the net before their bewildered opponents have time to draw breath. The Limerick stalwart, Dennis Broderick, tells of a day when he had held Ring scoreless for fifty minutes. 'You're having a quiet day', he whispers to Ring. A minute later, Ring plucks the sliotar from the air and rifles in the first of three goals, scored in as many minutes. As he saunters back from the third, Ring smiles at Broderick and says: 'Tisn't so quiet now, boy!'.
The Munster Final of 1959 ... Ned Power gets the better of Ring, and Waterford are on on their way to an All Ireland crown
John Doyle, he of the eight All Ireland medals with Tipp, offers the insightful conclusion that, while Tipp had won eight All Ireland medals for
him
, Ring had won eight for Cork.
'Shane'
first appeared in cinemas in 1953, the year Ring won his seventh All Ireland senior medal - against Galway, in a final overshadowed by an alleged incident involving a Galway back, Mickey Burke. Neither man ever spoke in public about it, but the day after the match rows broke out between members of the two teams in the Gresham hotel and Barry's hotel in Dublin. In the match, Ring scored a killer goal from all of sixty yards and, even years afterwards, liked to recall how he saw the raindrops dancing off the ropes as the sliotar hit the back of the net. Proving that he was not only a great hurler, but a Munster poet as well.
Like a classic Western, documentaries still largely conform to certain conventions of the genre. There's only so much even talented filmmakers like Forefront's Joe McCarthy and Tony McCarthy can do with grainy black-and-white footage and stills photos inter-cut with interviews with colleagues and analysis of the subject. Nevertheless, there was more than enough in this programme to hold the interest throughout and the material available was marshalled skilfully. In particular, the pictorial research was impressive, with much unseen colour footage of Ring revealed for the first time. There was a marvellous segment showing himself and the late Bobby Kennedy being interviewed for TV in Gaelic Park in New York. This was followed by a moving recall of a dance in that city that ended with Ring standing in the middle of the floor, a group of Cork exiles straining to touch him and they all singing 'De Banks'.
The scene sounded reminiscent of the Old Testament story about the people vieing with each to touch the hem of Jesus's garment. Cork people will not see the comparison as exaggerated. After all, the city ballad reminds us that:
On De Northside of De Lee
Dere's a God called Christy Ring ...
Justin Nelson's celebrated photo of two greats - Mackey and Ring. N'fheadar cad dúirt sé leis?
If there is a criticism at all, it might be that the programme could have explained more - or even speculated more on - the sudden ending of his playing career, his beloved Glen having defeated the skull-and-crossbones of UCC in a county quarter-final. Perhaps there are still some aspects of his life and times that colleagues are not ready to face into? More could have been told, too, of Ring the family man. While his nephew, Liam, was an excellent and fluent interviewee, we heard nothing from his immediate family.
Nevertheless, the tantalising, fleeting glimpses of Ring in his prime - for example, a marvellous move where he brushes aside
three
Wexford backs and the sliotar is over the bar before the goalie even reacts - help to make the case for him as the greatest hurler of all time. In AFR's view, that proposition is increasingly being challenged and the jury remains to be convinced. Or perhaps, as the Chinese leader Zhou En Lai remarked when asked to comment on the effects of the French Revolution, 'It is too early to know'. Nevertheless, the contemporary eyewitness testimony of other giants of the game like Jimmy Doyle and Paddy Buggy must count for a great deal at the bar of history.
Writing of
Shane
Roger Ebert, film critic of the The Chicago Sun-Times, refers to him as having 'a little of the samurai in him, and the medieval knight.' He might equally have been writing of Ringy. Because, as Alan Ladd explains to the tearful kid Joey, played by Brandon de Wilde, in one of the film's final scenes: 'A man has to be what he is …'
Once again, good triumphs over evil and Cork have vanquished Tipp, the bad guys are all dead and Shane bids his last farewell to Joey...
Finally, for those who might be curious... Kim Novak displays 'de pair a' thighs' and other attributes that astounded Cork and made her slightly more famous than Donie Wallace
Vote On It!' Poll:
Is Christy Ring the Greatest Hurler of All Time?
Related Topic:
The Great Ring Conspiracy …
Contact:
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