I’M sorry to say I never actually met Christy Ring.

After the Cork hurling team homecoming in the South Mall in September, 1978, I remember Christy being in exuberant form - we all were.

He had been a very young hurler when Cork won the three-in-a-row in 1943 - 11 years later, in 1954, Christy was the best known hurler in the world when Cork did the three-in-a- row again. More than two decades later, he was a vital and valued selector as the MacCarthy Cup came South in 1976, ’77 and ’78.

The first hurling book I ever read was The Clash Of The Ash, by Raymond Smith. Published in 1972, it chronicled Gaelic Games from the GAA’s 1884 foundation up to the early 1970s.

For me, 1972 was a seminal year in my growing love affair with our native games especially hurling.

That year I attended my first Munster Championship match, first Munster Final and first All-Ireland Hurling Final.

All of what Smith had written about the glories of hurling, about the atmosphere in Thurles, about the noise, colour and songs of the big games, and the ‘pull of the South’ as he called it - well, I experienced all that 50 years ago.

It was nearly a decade since Ring had worn the Red and White of Cork, and just five years after his last match with Glen Rovers. His name was still on the lips of every hurling follower - those who loved him and those on whom he had wreaked such heartbreak!

Raymond Smith, though born in Clare, grew up in Thurles. I read and re-read every sentence he wrote about the great games of hurling down the years.

Jamesy Kelleher was dead 14 years before I was born, yet amazingly I met Larry Flaherty, from Blackrock, who had lined out with him in the early 1900s.

Smith met and knew them all; the Mackeys, Rackards, Doyles and Langton of Kilkenny, the Waterford........

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