B.S: Would ye as children have played any pranks on neighbours or anything?
P.M: Yeah.
B.S: Could you tell me a little about that?
P.M: [Laughs] I could. I told you we used to play ball on the terrace, Seminary Terrace up in Water Lane and there were two unmarried ladies for want of a better word, living there, Father Harte used stay with one of them and they made our life a misery because they’d be taking the ball and they’d be cribbing about us and we used have em so one day anyway we found a bit of a rope and the two doors they had brass knobs in the centre of the door and the two unmarried ladies, living next door to one another and we would - got the bit of rope we tied both knobs and we left a small bit of slack and we knocked at one door first and we left a small pause before we knocked on the other, then we knocked on the other and then we knocked on the other, the first one we knocked on first, the lady in the house would have tried to open her door and she could only open it so far because the rope wouldn’t let it open any further and then the other one came out slightly after her and she tried to open her door so she closed the first one woman’s door. [laughs] We did make their lives a bit of a misery alright.
JCK: Well now, there was a substantial population in a very, very small area. Because of small houses, up a laneway, you could have thirty, forty or fifty houses. So with big families in small houses, you had a sizeable population and taking up very little area. Now, the people that lived there -- you had a variety. The variety in the sense you had poor people, but you had people who would be considered very well off. And the reason for it was -- as an example, Corbett’s Lane. If you walked up Corbett’s Lane, the first four houses would be small houses with ordinary people, working class people, in them. When you came to the fifth house, it would be a two-story farmhouse with a big black gate, tarred gate, above it, and a big yard at the back of the house. Now, at the back of that house, the people who lived in that house had cattle and sheep. Now, you could -- you could have the same thing in another couple of houses and then a big double storey house, and you could continue up the lane at both sides with that situation. So you had poor, and people who would be considered fairly well off for the times, all living in the one lane. Now at the top of the lane, my grandmother, Polly Kelleher, lived, my father’s mother, and across the way from their house was two tripe houses, Welsh’s and Reilly’s, and around the corner, you had another tripe house, Dylan’s. So you had three tripe, drisheen places at the top of Corbett’s lane, at the junction of Corbett’s -- top of Corbett’s Lane and Kearney’s Lane. And at one -- at one o’clock in the day the hooter would go in those places and a lot of women would come out with their rubber aprons and their clogs for their dinner break, and they all lived in the laneways around. So you had plenty -- you had a lot of work going on in those places because you -- as well as tripe and drisheen houses you had slaughter-houses. And to go back to those days, we weren’t far from the countryside, so you could understand that a lot of the men that lived in the area were butchers, and predominantly the butchers came from the north side of the city rather than the south side, because of the area that they were, you had the slaughter-houses. Now, as well as that then, you had families who, their father reared them, and they earned their wages by being cattle-drovers. They’d go up -- the men’d go up Fairhill at two or three o’clock in the morning, round up cattle belonging to the farmers and hunt the cattle from there down to Midleton, or to Carrigaline, or out to Macroom for the fairs at seven o’clock. As a matter of fact, there was one fair held every Saturday morning right over off Anglesea Street, across from the Garda Station, in that little square there across from the Garda Station. Every Saturday morning you had a fair there, and there’d be sheep and pigs on sale there. And those two pubs, one -- the two of them are there but one is idle at the moment -- and eh twas -- they were farmers’ pubs.
S H: And I suppose you saw Christy Ring play on many occasions.
J B: Many, many occasions.
S H: What do you think, do you think he was one of the greatest of all hurlers?
J B: He was, no doubt, he was, he was simply a marvel. But there were many other great players too. Ring had --
S H: Did you meet him?
J B: Funny, I met him once and, an unusual occasion, one famous match in Thurles in 1944 and there was no transport in Ireland during the War. And we went to Thurles, we cycled to Thurles, three of us, the two chaps I told you about earlier and myself, three of us cycled to Thurles. We left Cork early Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock and we stayed in Cashel that Saturday night, on to Thurles on Sunday morning. And one of these chaps, Sean Norton, he’s still alive, he was working in Suttons. Suttons had a big store on the South Mall at the time. And Christy Ring was driving a lorry for Williams in Midleton, and he used to come into Sutton's collecting stuff or delivering stuff, one or the other, probably both, but Sean knew him from coming into Suttons, and we were in Thurles on that Sunday morning and we met Christy Ring.
J B: And we were only 18, 19, Christy was a couple of years older. And Sean knew him and we spoke to Christy Ring on that Sunday morning and just for five, ten minutes and he went away from us then. And that same day he scored a marvellous goal to win the game for Cork.
J B: He did, he did. and he ran fifty yards solo run and scored a great goal.
S H: And what do you think were his greatest attributes as a player?
J B: Well he was an unusual man. Every game he played, no matter what the occasion, big or small, I would say every fibre of his being went into that game.
J B: No matter what it was. And he was more determined than anybody else. And of course, he excelled in all parts of the game then you know, striking, lifting, hitting, everything, he excelled in everything, he was a truly marvellous man. But it was his, just his grim determination to get the ball you know, I think that singled him out above everybody else.
S H: Yeah. Did he have a great tactical sense of the game?
J B: Oh he had. He had. But that came with advancing years then. But there were three different Christy Rings. His career spanned a long time and for the first eight, nine years he was a beautiful young hurler, truly a joy to watch, and he suffered a lot in that time from close marking and by close -- I would say nasty marking. And then for the second period, he was a hard man, he gave back what he got, just as hard as he got he gave back and these were his great days, he was a truly marvellous man then. And then for his third period he to use your rugby cliché, he got his retaliation in first.
J B: Yeah. He was, he was --
S H Turned mean?
J B: Mm, he was. You had three different Rings. And I mean you hear older people now, of course, only old people remember Ring now, and depending on what county you came from or what club you supported, they remember the Ring that suits their own point of view.
S H: Yeah.
J B: But there were three.
S H: And do you think despite that like obviously he had to develop a certain level of aggression to survive I suppose but, and succeed, but was he basically a fair player?
J B: Oh he was, he was.
S H: A clean player?
J B: He was. God, I saw him doing some wonderful things. In his dying days, you might say when he was on his last legs I saw him and the way he could chase after. I saw him doing this --- a ball going into the corner and he would chase after a fullback and the fullback would be younger and faster and the fullback would reach out and Ring would race out and then just 15 yards before the fullback got to the ball Ring would suddenly vary away from the ball and the fullback would get to the ball and he’d hit it out and Ring would be waiting out 15 yards to catch the fullback’s and score, and I saw him doing that on a couple, what, on at least two occasions.
S H: Yeah? Just on instinct really Ability to read the play?
J B: Twas, 'twas the look on the fullback’s face.