Jack Lynch's six of the best
Former Taoiseach and Cork dual-star Jack Lynch in conversation with Barry Desmond, T.D., Minister for Social Welfare and Health at the 1983 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Semi-Final Replay, Dublin v Cork, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork. Picture credit: Ray McManus / SPORTSFILE
By Cian Murphy
One for the GAA table quiz merchants… Who was the first player to win six All-Ireland senior medals in a row?
Given he is captain and listed at number one on the team sheet, you might think the answer is Dublin goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton as part of the Dubs’ six in a row Sam Maguire triumph of 2020.
But, in fact, the feat occurred 80 years ago this summer, when Cork hero Jack Lynch wrote himself into GAA history.
Fianna Fail TD and Taoiseach from 1966-1973, Glen Rovers legend Lynch first made his name when he was on the Cork team that won a hurling four in a row from 1941-1944 starring at midfield. He was then part of the Cork football team who won their first ever Sam Maguire in 1945, before being back again at Croke Park when the Cork hurlers captured the MacCarthy Cup in 1946.
The incredible run of success gave him six Celtic Crosses in a row as an All-Ireland champion.
While the dynamic Dubs have set their sextet record and Cluxton, Mick Fitzsimons and James McCarthy have set their own record winning nine football medals and Top Cat King Henry Shefflin has 10 hurling All-Irelands, Lynch’s blended run will likely never be seen again in an modern era where the senior inter-county dual player is sadly all but extinct.
Lynch won eight county championships in a row with a fabled Glen Rovers team, while also playing football for their sister club St Nicolas. He was Cork captain for the All-Ireland final at Croke Park on 3 September, 1939 on a day known internationally as the outbreak of World War II with the German invasion of Poland, and which announced as a ‘news flash’ during the radio commentary from Jones’s Road. In Ireland, that hurling finale will also forever be remembered as the ‘thunder and lightning final’ when sheets of biblical heavy rain made the dye run from the jerseys of the Kilkenny and Cork players.
As a contemporary of the legendary Christy Ring, like so many other storied stars on Leeside, Lynch is shaded in that shadow. But a look at his ‘palmarés’ leaves you under no illusions about just how good a player Jack Lynch was.
When asked to recall his importance as a player, Glen Rovers historian Diarmuid O’Donovan says: “When I was growing up, I can remember an argument among an older generation about who was a better hurler, Ring or Lynch.
“He was playing senior championship hurling with the Glen at the age of 17 and was later the captain of what would have been a very seasoned team. He was a great leader and was fiercely competitive. I remember my father saying that if the two of them were in front of a wall that Lynch would find a way around it, Ring would find a way through it.
“He had an aura about him. It’s phenomenal that the two of them, Lynch and Ring, played on the same team for the club and the county at the same time. He moved to Dublin and played for Civil Service for a while and even after that he would never lose touch with the Glen and would always like to know about the club and who was playing,” he added.
A key entry in the Lynch legend are the events of 20 February, 1944 when he played for Civil Service in the morning against Eoghan Ruadh at Islandbridge, then dashed down the road to Croke Park and despite having to talk his way past a dubious dressing room steward who wasn’t convinced Jack was there to play, was part of the Munster hurling team against Ulster in a Railway Cup inter-provincial semi-final, returned to the dressing room after to change into a fresh blue jersey and ran back out to play against Ulster in Railway Cup football. Only the Munster hurlers were victorious on the day, but Lynch scored in all three games.
In his Jack Lynch biography Where He Sported and Played (Blackwater Press, 2000) Liam Ó Tuama needs three full pages to list the sporting achievements and 79 league and championship finals that begin with a North Parish U16 football championship in 1929 and run up to the 1951 Cork County Senior Football Championship.
His career predated the GAA All-Stars scheme, but Jack Lynch’s place in the history of the game is reflected in his selection on the GAA Hurling Team of the Century (1984), Team of the Millennium (2000) and the Texaco Hall of Fame (1984). The only available medal to elude him in his glittering career was a national football league title.
After comfortable victories over Clare and Waterford, Cork, captained by Christy Ring, dispatched Limerick by 3-8 to 1-3 in the 1946 Munster final in Thurles. They saw off Galway 2-10 to 0-3 in a semi-final played in Birr before a resounding 7-5 to 3-8 victory over Kilkenny in front of almost 65,000 at Croke Park.
A sixth consecutive Celtic Cross, it was Jack Lynch’s last All-Ireland medal for the Rebels.
In 1972 as Taoiseach, he had the job of officially welcoming Muhammad Ali to Ireland ahead of his fight with Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at Croke Park. Lynch didn’t make much fuss of his own playing days at the venue, but it was one time when Ali was in the presence of Greatness.
