I was working the night shift at Croke Park. A lonesome detail for any security guard. All those nooks and crannies. Too many strange noises echoing through the inky darkness of a Dublin night. Too many mischievous colleagues spinning spooky yarns about ghosts of finals past roaming the empty stadium in quest of belated sporting justice. Enough to give a man of nervous disposition the jitters.
A mysterious clanging sound brought me down to pitch level that particular night. An eerie prospect in the wee small hours. Couldn’t find the offending gate but happened upon a brazen intruder, his head down, pacing circles around the middle of the field.
“Excuse me, how did you get in here?” I asked, standing well-back. You can never be too careful with hard chaws who think breaking into the stadium is a mighty lark. This miscreant didn’t even bother to turn around.
“I built this place!” he answered in a Cork accent and a tone that brooked no argument. “Me and others like me!”
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I stepped back a couple of paces, fearing he was one of those “my taxes, my stadium” merchants. Approach with extreme caution. That’s what it said in the training manual.
I shone my flashlight in his direction to try to get a proper look at what I was dealing with. Not what I expected. A bald, compact character in his late 50s wearing the type of suit lads of a certain age used to don for mass on Sunday mornings of big matches, back when Holy Communion was still part of that cherished ritual. His dark red tie too fat to be recently fashionable. The lapels of the jacket a smidgen too wide. The smart attire of another era.
“I’m looking for my watch,” he said, sounding increasingly annoyed at the fact I was intruding upon his search. “Shell gave it to me to mark 25 years of service and this was one of the first times I wore it. Now shine that thing on the grass over here and make yourself useful.”
Head still down, he was walking back and forth with a determined gait. The march of somebody fit for his age. Exuding a certain energy. A coiled spring of a man.
“You can’t be in here,” I insisted, even as I dutifully felt somehow compelled to shine the torch exactly where he demanded it.
He lifted his head and glared at me with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. That’s when I recognised the face.
“You look just like…”
“I’m Christy Ring, nice to meet you.”
“But, but… you…you can’t be….” He didn’t appear to hear me or appreciate my disbelief. He was too busy meticulously recreating the crime scene of the disappeared watch, muttering to himself as he retraced his steps.
“Charlie Mac stuck over the last point. The whistle went. We had beat Kilkenny for the three-in-row. I ran in off the sideline. I jumped on somebody, somebody jumped on me and next time I looked the watch was gone off my wrist.”
He was trying to get his bearings, scanning the stadium for familiar landmarks, struggling to find any.
“The whole place looks very different than I remember it. Taller. Wider.”
“I’m sure it does. The game you are talking about took place in 1978. That was more than 40 years ago. Are you a…a…gh…”
“For a Dub, you seem to know your hurling?” he said, cutting off my question in the melodious sing-song accent of my late grandfather from Cork.
“Not really, I just know a lot about you. My mother’s father played for the Barrs, he used to tell stories about the great Christy Ring, I mean, eh, you. He had a scrapbook of old newspapers and clippings about your life he used make me read. He said you were the greatest.”
The compliment was ignored. Ring crouched down and started kneeling on the pitch, running his fingers along the sward, a designer appreciating the texture of expensive fabric.
“This grass is magnificent. Much better than I remember it. So perfect for ground hurling.”
“Well, that’s not really a thing anymore.”
“What do you mean it’s not a thing?”
“Ground hurling kind of went out of fashion. Nobody pulls on the ball like that anymore. It’s all about getting it into the hand.”
He stopped looking for the watch and gave me the glare. Again. Eyes burning through me.
“Gone?”
“The way of the do-do.”
“Next thing you’ll tell me nobody doubles on the ball in the air anymore.”
“Now that you mention it. That kind of went too.”
“One of the greatest skills in sport. What kind of game have ye left at all?”
“The players are fitter and definitely more skillful. But it’s all about possession.”
“Possession? The game is about winning your 50-50 ball.”
“Not anymore.” Wrong thing to say. One more death stare.
“Hang on a second,” I said, suddenly remembering stuff I’d read about Ring and getting braver. “Didn’t you talk once about getting rid of the throw-in and starting the game with puck-outs?”
“I did,” he said, excitedly. “Did they bring it in? No better way to start the game than with a long puck-out down into the forwards? Let battle commence.”
He sprung back to his feet as if about to meet a ball in full flight. I sniggered. And he noticed.
“What are you laughing at?”
“Puck-outs, how can I put this? They’re different now.”
“How could they be different?”
“They go short. Very short. A lot.”
He seemed bemused.
“Sometimes the goalie drills it to the corner back who then drills it back to the goalie who then sprays it to the other corner back.”
I made hand gestures to illustrate what I meant. He just scratched his pate, genuinely perplexed. His brow furrowed as he struggled to picture what this would look like.
“Who’s marking the corner backs?” he shouted, delighted to have found a hole in the idea.
“A lot of teams just leave one forward inside.”
His was the headshaking of a man somewhere between denial and disbelief. I felt so bad for him I was tempted to break out my phone and show him a clip from YouTube but thought it might be too much. Wasn’t sure which would have frightened him more, the hand-held technology or the footage of modern hurling.
“I don’t suppose they listened to my idea for getting rid of points and making the game goals only either?”
“No, there’s actually a lot more points scored now than ever before. Loads more. I think Cork scored 29 in the 70 minutes of their All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny the other week.”
He sat down on the grass. As if trying to take it all in. I decided this was not the time to tell him they named the competition for weaker counties after him.
“Who are Cork playing in the final?”
“Limerick.”
“Limerick?! Mackey’s crowd? In an All-Ireland final? Don’t tell me. The championship is all changed too.”
I nodded. He made one more forlorn sweep of the ground beneath our feet where he had come looking for his watch. And I tried to cheer him up.
“But Cork are captained by a Glen man and one of the selectors is from Cloyne.”
“They’ll be grand so,” he grinned, as if reassured there are still some certainties in Cork and in hurling, and then he started to walk towards the tunnel. No goodbye. No more words. Halfway there, he disappeared. Gone.
I trudged back up the steps of the vast, empty Cusack, folded myself into a seat for a few moments. Then, I thought I heard a faint echo, a voice shout-whispering, “come on Cork!” But that might just have been the way the wind sometimes whistles through the rafters.
