Atrium Business Centre

JACK LYNCH & 2009 HURLING ALL STARS SELECTION

The GAA Hurling All Stars Team was recently named without as much as one Cork Player on the Panel—there was even a Dublin player named –Hard to imagine a Hurling All Stars Team with a Dublin player and no Cork player but that’s the situation. That is a far cry from the halcyon days of Cork Hurling when Cork more often than not dominated the game and, in fact until recently when Kilkenny caught up with them, had won more All Irelands than any other County.

This was the topic of discussion recently as we sat in the chair next to the life sized effigy of Jack Lynch sitting reading the paper in the Blackpool Centre

 (This fantastic Bronze Effigy was specially commissioned by the Love family to mark the opening of the Blackpool shopping and Business Parks with a tribute to somebody special to and highly regarded in the area). Minister Micheál Martin was visiting the area at the time and found the question interesting. There was a meeting of the Irish Marketing Institute in the area that day and Jack Lynch’s effigy and how life like it was became a topic of conversation among them—Dermot Walsh of the Atrium Business Centre, a member of the institute said he used to know Jack well and the likeness, apart from the bronze colour, was uncanny.

We wondered what Jack would have made of the current Hurling scene in Cork and, as a holder of 6 All Ireland medals, one suspects He would have had strong feelings on the matter.  One wonders, for instance, what Jack would have thought of Players refusing to train or play under the appointed coach?  We suspect not too much! What would he have thought about no Cork player getting an All Star award—again we suspect not too much and the opinion was offered that Jack, as he was a consummate Politician, would have seen a definite correlation between the two events, or non-events as it turns out.

Unfortunately, lifelike and all as the Effigy of Jack Lynch is, it is still only a statue, and the Blackpool Centres will never be given the answers, but the interesting questions remain!