One of the great pleasures of Gaelic sports, perhaps more so in hurling than football, is the re-living and the re-telling of great games, epic moments and the deeds of giants of men, thinks An Fear Rua …. It all probably started as far back as the first time someone told the story of Setanta hurling a sliotar all the way from Dundalk to Armagh, or of him killing Cullen’s hound on the Hill of Tara with the single puck of a sliotar…

Wherever hurling men (and, thankfully, increasingly these days, hurling women) are gathered, there is much talk late into the night of great games and great hurlers: Mackey of Limerick, Keane of Waterford, Maher of Kilkenny, the Rackards of Wexford, the Doyles – Jimmy and John – of Tipperary and, of course, Ring of Cork. Many’s the pleasant hour An Fear Rua has spent in the back snug of Ma Molloy’s famous drinking emporium with some of the leading lights of Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds debating major questions such as: was ‘Baldy’ Donoghue a better centre forward than ‘Legs’ Looby in the Gownacalley-John Redmonds ‘junor’ hurling team that reached the mid-Tipp final in ‘33 ?

The recent fashion for picking teams of the decade and teams of the Millennium has added additional bite to debates such as these, and An Post’s Football Millennium Team was rightly criticised in certain quarters for an eccentric selection or two. For example, the Wexford four-in-a-row football All Ireland winners of the second decade of the century got nary a mention, while Tommy Murphy, centre field on a Laois team that failed to win an All Ireland – no doubt a great player – made it into the final selection. The fact that Tommy worked for many years as a postal worker wouldn’t have had any bearing on the judges’ deliberations of course, thinks An Fear Rua.

Still, as the oul wan said in the shnug, when the young fella unexpectedly put his arm around her, ‘Ní lia duine ná tuairim’ in these matters – everyone to their own opinion. For years, the name of Christy Ring has been unchallenged in debates over the best and greatest in the game of hurling. An Fear Rua is not afraid to stand up and be counted on this topic, and to say out loud what many have been saying privately for years: there is no doubt that Ring was a great player, but An Fear Rua suspects he was not the greatest.

Ring had an unparalled array of hurling skills, honed by endless hours of daily practice from childhood in the fields of his native Cloyne. Ring had natural strength and power, and kept himself fitter than most in his day. He was speedy and he could read a game well. Above all, he was an inspirational player, and was at his best when Cork were a couple of points down to an old enemy like Tipperary. In a flash of a couple of balls, Ring would put away a few of goals and pull the game out of the fire once again. But, every time An Fear Rua saw Ring in action, his game was always marred by what can only be described as a few dirty pulls across his opponent. Now, An Fear Rua knows from his own experience, that a hurling star often has to assert who is boss in the very first encounter with his marker – ‘give em’ a touch of the shtick and show ‘im who’s boss …’ And there was many’s the obscure Clare or Waterford back who thought they might make a name for themselves by keeping Ring scoreless and live off it for years afterwards in pubs up and down their native county.

But, even allowing for all, what strikes An Fear Rua forcibly is the number of sessions of hurling reminiscences he has been involved in, where someone always says: ‘Ring was the greatest of them all, but sure wasn’t he a very dirty player ….’ Now, this of course, is heresy to Cork people who form a very powerful Mafia in GAA circles, not least in the ‘meeja’ who commentate on these matters. The Cork attitude to Ring is probably best summed up in the line from the old song that goes: ‘On de North side of de Lee, dere’s a God called Christy Ring ….’ Quite frankly, in AFR’s judgment, if Ring had been a native of any county other than Cork, he’d have been dethroned long ago, with iconoclasts led by a bunch of Leesiders.

However, An Fear Rua predicts that the recent death of Jack Lynch will prompt a re-assessment of many issues in Irish life. Some will gain and some will lose out in this process. For example, a disillusioned public – and an angry younger generation – may begin to understand that Fiann Fáil once stood for progress, decency and honour in Irish politics and the modern day party may gain from that. The already diminished reputation of that dirty little Saint Vincents’ gaelic footballer, Charvet J Haughey, will finally disappear into oblivion. And – increasingly – thinking fans will begin to Lynch, rather than Ring, as the greatest hurler of all time…

Because – asserts An Fear Rua – Lynch had everything that Ring had, and more. He was a clean player, and he was a gentleman both on and off the pitch, to friend and foe alike, to fan and player alike. That completeness and totality of skills and attitude puts him in a unique position in the pantheon of hurling greats. Ironically, Raymond Smith, that oul’ windbag of GAA commentary, managed to bring out a book some years about twenty seven hurling ‘greats’ and failed to include Lynch in it. Then he had to gall to invite Jack along to launch the book for him ! Well, in all the years AFR knew him, the same Raymond – or ‘Congo’ to his close friends – had a neck on him like a jockey’s b… oops, apologies, An Fear Rua doesn’t want to get himself into Graham Geraghty-style difficulties.

Still, while he knew little or nothing about hurling, the same Raymond was well able to get stuck into Charvet J Haughey when he was Taoiseach in the early Eighties, and was being less than candid about the state of the nation’s – and his own personal - finances.Still, what more could you expect from a man whose Gaelic footballing career amounts to nothing more than a reputation as a toiling little midfielder in a St Vincents, Fairview team that never won anything….