Eamonn saw us as athletes, that’s how he treated us
RENA BUCKLEY
RESPECT was one of the principal contributors to the greatness of the late Eamonn Ryan. The coaching life of a figure as successful as the man who led Cork to 10 ladies football titles in 11 seasons is routinely taken apart by those in search of its secrets.
But like most dominant figures in sport, there was no mystery to the workings of Eamonn Ryan.
Rena Buckley frequently laughs when remembering the coach for whom she thrived. Her career is one of the most successful in the history of Gaelic games: 18 All-Ireland senior titles, 11 in football and seven in camogie, as well as 10 All-Stars, split evenly between the codes.
The sadness she felt at news of Ryan’s death 10 days ago is still detectable, but the memories they shared, his impact on her life, and her understanding, even during her career, that she was working under a remarkable individual are important consolations.
And she identifies respect as one of his strongest virtues.
‘Eamonn viewed us as athletes, and that’s how he treated us, always and ever,’ she says. ‘He talked about us as footballers, as athletes. He would have emphasised always that we were at the top level. He wouldn’t have regarded the men’s team at a different level to us.
‘We were the top team in our category. It was obvious that he viewed his role as being really important. He didn’t see taking up any other role as a better (option).
‘That level of respect he had for us, that was part of the reason we held him in such high regard.’
This aspect of Eamonn Ryan’s character is interesting in two ways. Firstly, he brought a long record of success from the men’s game with him when he took over as manager of the Cork ladies’ side at the start of 2004.
He played senior football for his county for six years, and managed the footballers from 1980 to 1984. That tenure included the famous 1983 victory over Kerry after Tadhg Óg Murphy’s late goal.
Ryan won minor football All-Irelands as manager in 1991 and 1993, while also managing Na Piarsaigh to county senior hurling championships in 1990 and 1995.
He was a proven winner when he took over managing the Cork ladies. He left the role 12 years later a legend.
And this brings up the second aspect of that word respect that Rena Buckley uses. Eamonn Ryan didn’t consider taking over a ladies team a stepping stone, or a means to an end. He was, in his eyes, managing a Cork team, an inter-county team, and he treated his players with the respect due to them.
This attitude seems logical, but it is one that some might still struggle with, even in a time when the cause of women in sport is being supported like never before.
And that in itself is in good part down to the Cork footballers, that remarkable group that won those 10 All-Irelands and were only stopped from doing 10 in a row by defeat to Tyrone in 2010.
‘The journey he brought Cork ladies football on was exceptional,’ reflects Buckley.
‘Cork ladies football changed drastically in that time, and probably ladies football across the country would have changed in that period, hugely. Eamonn made a massive contribution to that. He was superb in terms of raising the standard in Cork, which obviously filtered through to every other county, because everyone is trying to be better than everybody else.
‘He was highly experienced and knowledgeable, so he would have raised the coaching standards, too.
‘If you were anyone, anyone at all, and you were watching the Cork ladies footballers and the manager did an interview after the game, I have no doubt you would be thinking, “I would like to be involved in that sport. I would like my family to be involved. He’s a great guy”.’
His importance to Rena Buckley and that generation of players will last lifetimes, but his importance to the promotion of equality in sport will grow with time, too.
At the conclusion of the 20x20 campaign last autumn, Brian O’Driscoll was one of the participants to a discussion about what comes next.
And his answer was simple: it’s up to men. Men now have to support women’s teams and female athletes, and ensure that the world in which their sisters or wives or daughters live in, treats aspiring sportspeople the same, whether they are men or women.
Eamonn Ryan’s tremendous years leading Cork stand as a glittering testament to fairness, open-mindedness, and respect. ‘Early on in my career, I was aware I was mad about him, I was aware he was brilliant, but I probably couldn’t verbalise what was brilliant about him; I hadn’t that figured out,’ says Buckley.
‘But my parents would tell me I’d come home from training and I’d sit down and tell them what Eamonn told us tonight, what Eamonn said tonight, what Eamonn did today, what story he told.
‘It was clear I was taking it in. I would have started off with Eamonn when I was a secondary school student, and I would have finished with him when I was 28. I really would have appreciated everything he said.’
Public health restrictions mean there could be no personal goodbye from her or any of the other players who played under Ryan. His wife Pat and six children mourn a husband, a father and a grandfather but are perhaps consoled to some extent by the recollections of people like Rena Buckley, who he helped become a marvellous footballer and an outstanding role model.
And one of the consequences of that was Buckley’s involvement with the 20x20 effort.
At its launch in 2018, she told a story about being asked to present medals to boys and girls teams’ at a club in the county. She was taken aside just before the ceremony and told that the club didn’t want her to present to the boys, just the girls. She made no big deal of it then or now, but it was a startling illustration of how deeply embedded attitudes are, in sport and in life.
Now, she sees change taking place at a notable click.
‘At grassroots level now, regardless of your gender, if you like sport, you play sport,’ she says. ‘If you don’t like sport, you don’t play sport and that’s absolutely fine.’
Her own career continues at club level, in football and camogie – pandemic notwithstanding.
She has some ambitions of coaching when she retires. And she will not want for inspiration.
‘Eamonn had very strong values that he lived by,’ she says quietly. ‘Now, he never read off a list of his values to me, but it was clear from his behaviour he was hugely loyal.
‘He coached us in Cork for 12 years, and I don’t think he missed a training session. His loyalty to the group was second to none.’
They achieved brilliant feats together, and share a legacy.
The impact of Eamonn Ryan will be felt for generations, as those who learned from him start to share that wisdom. And the knowledge and the love and the respect will run from one age to the next.