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GAA Museum has complete collection
Fr Richie Goode with the chalice containing Christy Ring's last All-Ireland medal at St Augustine’s church in Cork before its closureRing had donated his last medal to St Augustine’s Church in the centre of Cork city, and they had melted it down to form part of an ornate altar chalice.
That church on Washington Street, however,It arrived on Tuesday and was put on display with the rest of Ring’s medal collection later that afternoon. It sits on top of a case housing 74 other medals won by Ring in one of the most decorated careers in the history of the GAA. In a Cork career that spanned 23 years, Ring’s last All-Ireland win came against Wexford in 1954.
All his other medals – which includes nine Munster championships, four National Leagues and 18 Railway Cups – have been on loan to the museum from the Ring family since 1998. That loan agreement is renewed every two years. Oldest All-Ireland winning hurler Jimmy Lynam dies aged 100 in his native Cork “It’s great to have it because we’ve completed the collection,” says Adam Staunton, GAA Museum archivist and collections officer.
“The Ring family are brilliant, they’re so easy to deal with and so helpful every time the loan arrangement comes up. “The medals are in our Hall of Fame exhibition and in there we have our two teams of the millennium. That stuff is in the front of the display area and that’s where all of Christy’s medals are. The sheer amount of medals in one spot, belonging to one person, that alone blows people away.
” There had been some doubt about where the chalice would end up and in the weeks leading up to the closure of St Augustine’s other institutions had privately expressed an interest in taking the chalice into their care. At the last Mass on July 12th, however, Fr Paddy O’Reilly, vicar provincial of the Augustinians in Ireland, said the chalice would be loaned to the GAA Museum.
The chalice was so precious it had only been used for special occasions in the church, and it was on the altar for the final Mass. The piece has a figure of Our Lady on the stem surrounded by little white gemstones. Among the features on the base is a cross that is reputedly where the gold from Ring’s All-Ireland medal was employed. The GAA Museum already had a relationship with the Augustinians.
Last year, a chalice from an Augustinian friary in New Ross came into their collection, containing four of Aidan Doyle’s medals secured to the base. Two of them were All-Ireland football medals from Wexford’s four-in-a-row between 1915 and 1918.
“I think the fact that we had worked with them before with Aidan Doyle’s chalice helped them to see the kind of job we would do with Christy’s chalice,” says Staunton. Oldest All-Ireland winning hurler Jimmy Lynam dies aged 100 in his native CorkBoston Scientific lays groundwork to shift $15bn from Irish operationMembers resign from internal People Before Profit group over ‘hegemonic’ leadership styleCork man fined for abusing British Airways cabin crew in drunken row over toilet Get an in-depth look at the weekend's action and the best analysis of upcoming fixtures in our weekly newsletter
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