Former Galway hero Brendan Lynskey on the road to recovery after treatment for prostate cancer
THE two previous Galway versus Limerick All-Ireland senior finals both had tinges of ‘changing of the guard’ about them. In 2018, Galway were the reigning champions but a new era of all-conquering Treaty men were about to embark on a period of real dominance. Then back in 1980, Limerick still had a few All-Ireland winners from 1973 in their team but a younger Galway side, now beginning to introduce a host of players who would go on to be leading lights later in that decade, edged them out.
Quite often however, that changing of the guard doesn’t happen automatically, there are a few harsh lessons along the way, and even though he didn’t quite break through in time to feature in that victorious 1980 campaign, Brendan Lynskey’s form for Meelick-Eyrecourt in their run to the Galway county final of that year meant that by 1981, he was one of the dynamic young guns in the Tribesman camp.
“Whenever you first pull on the Galway jersey and you play for your county, you sort of have a bit of a swagger about you, you think you're something,” he says, before recounting how the All-Ireland semi-final of that year, also against Limerick, was both a setback and a crucial learning experience in his development.
“I was walking up to shake hands with Seán Foley, the Limerick full back, and he looked at me with a steely look and all he said was, ‘if you're around after the match, son, we'll shake hands!’
“I can tell you this much, every time I togged out after that, those was the last words I thought about leaving the dressing room! My whole world collapsed that day, that's the last thing you're expecting.”
Lynskey did go on to score the only goal in a 1-8 to 0-11 draw, but it was a day when the respective back lines on both sides got the better of things in Croke Park, and one local newspaper ran a colour piece with the headline: “John Connolly and Frank Burke – Galway needs you both – NOW”.
Sure enough, Connolly and Burke were recalled in what Lynskey recalls as “a humbling experience” and they helped to drive Galway back to Croke Park for the final, only to be reeled in by a second half comeback from Offaly that September.
Days when Brendan Lynskey, or indeed any of that maturing Galway team, would be cowed by any opponent, grew very rare indeed after that day. In his autobiography, Michael Duignan makes reference to Lynskey greeting him on the pitch as a teenager with the words “where are you going, the minor match is over?”, though Brendan himself is not so sure that it happened quite like that.
Either way, by the time that Galway side reached the peak of their powers under Cyril Farrell, they spent some time as the undisputed leading power in the country. Which begs the obvious question, how does Lynskey feel that his Galway side would have fared in the modern game?
“The skill set with the players nowadays is mind-boggling, the level of fitness is off the charts. It's nearly gone so fast now, it's hard to watch it, do you know what I mean?.
“Look at the 1988 All-Ireland Final, the second one we won, like, and the pace of it, we, you look like we're walking. I mean that respectfully, we were super fit, but then look at last year's All-Ireland Final and they're chalk and cheese, it's just a different level”.
Like Christy Ring before him, Lynskey subscribes to the old adage that the best players who ever played are the ones who are playing now, and the best ones of all time are the ones who are yet to come, and he doubts whether his own game, which was undoubtedly a style of play much more suited to hurling as it was 40 years ago, would survive in the modern game.
Though on the other hand, he says that not all of his colleagues from back then fall into the same bracket. “Look at the likes of Jason Rabbitte now, it’s exceptional what he can do and he still a teenager, but for years already, he’s been prepared for exactly this. We didn’t get that, the game was just different back then.
“That’s not to say that we didn’t have players who were unbelievably skillful, I think of players like Joe Cooney and John Connolly, you’d probably put Joe Canning in that bracket as the three best players ever to pull on a maroon jersey.
“Joe (Cooney) would be right up there with any of the present skill level of any of the present Galway or Limerick teams, he was an exceptional player, 10 out of 10 every day.
“Then you go back to our half-back line, I still maintain is the best half-back line ever, Pete Finnerty, Gerry McInerney and Tony Keady”.
That assessment carries weight, both because of the balance with which its presented, but also because of how Lynskey is still an avid follower of the sport. There are players from that era who might look back with rose-tinted glasses, but now playing golf at the weekend and drawing their views only from Sunday Game highlights.
Brendan, who now lives in Oranmore, is an ever-present at Galway league and championship matches, as well as a huge number of fixtures for his adopted parish and his home club – though he did miss last year’s Intermediate championship final against Kinvara.
No-one will be stripping him of his die-hard credentials however, as his absence was due to treatment for prostate cancer.
“Now that is a life-changing experience for me, and in a very different way, very humbling as well. It certainly brings you down very quick.”
He offers a word of thanks to his GP, Dr. Kieran Kelleher and his surgical team, describing how even when you’ve got your diagnosis, the confirmation of a treatment plan and the scale of what you’re facing into is a hammer blow which in his case, was complicated by a case of lupus.
However the surgery went well, and his gratitude is palpable. “There's an awful lot of people in worse positions than me, so thank God, my PSA readings are staying low now, and please God it’s onwards and upwards from here”.
He’ll be in Croke Park on Sunday, and describes his outlook as “quietly confident”. Limerick has a few players that have not reached the height that they did in previous years,” he says.
“They’re good hurlers and there’s no way they’ll fold like Cork, but there is one similarity with the semi-final for me. Last time, Galway wanted to win, Cork had to win, and that brought its own pressure.
“Sunday is the same, I think. John Kiely is in his last year, there are some Limerick players that have won loads of All-Irelands and they are some of the best players that we’ve ever seen, but they know that time is moving on.
“I like what Micheál Donoghue is doing, the players and management are working well together and they’re getting better all the time, and a lot of these Galway lads have their whole careers ahead of them. Limerick need to win because they don’t have that, and I think that gives Galway a great chance.”