Christy Ring

Christy Ring was born in Cloyne, County Cork, in 1920, and his father cycled him eighteen miles to watch hurling before the boy could drive a lorry. The village still orbits that boyhood: a quiet schoolchild who won a hurley for top marks, then a centre-forward who collected eight All-Ireland medals for Cork. Ring died young in 1979, but Cloyne keeps him alive because greatness there does not arrive fully formed; it is carried on a bicycle cross-bar, dropped at a pitch, and waited for.