Medal Mash-Up exhibition showcases winning mementoes across 25 different sports

If the measure of the success of an exhibition is that those visiting will leave knowing more than when they arrived, Medal Mash-Up certainly ticks that box.

Gathering together national medals across a variety of different codes and pursuits, the display began in August and will run until the end of September.

The initiative is the brainchild of Jim Ryan, who is a true sports fanatic, having attended his first All-Ireland in 1966 – his book A Sporting Beat outlines a life spent attending fixtures in tandem with his years of service as a member of An Garda Síochána.

With Danny O’Neill, Jim was able to call on a wealth of contacts to loan their medals and he feels that the effort has been worth it.

“I think it's getting a good reaction, I think people kind of know what it's about now,” he says.

“We've medals from about 25 different sports, All-Irelands and different things.

“It's nice to see the differences – you know, we’re used to seeing GAA medals and sometimes they can be kind of bland, but when you see the other medals and how colourful they are, and just all the different sports, it's just amazing.

“It's just good fun in that you have these people who have hard-earned medals that they might have lost but then they go looking for them and find them and there’s more interest again and there’s a little story with everything.

“I had John Kerins’ 1990 football medal and I was looking for a 1990 hurling medal to go with it. I rang Mickey Mullins, who was part of that panel, and he was in to me in 20 minutes with it!”

The exhibition is of course underpinned bythe generosity of those who have allowed their medals to be shown.

“I was talking to Denis Burns, who has three All-Ireland medals,” Jim says.

“He’s living in Carrignavar now and we did a little thing there, because we were saying there’s medals in every parish – it could be Scór, tug-of-war, athletics or whatever.

“We put them all together and it was incredible to see the amount of medals won by people in Carrignavar.

“From there then, we said that you could do something bigger and we have about 200 medals, from gymnastics to swimming to motorbiking to cycling to everything – a few All-Star statuettes too.

“The first person I asked was a guy called Ricky Burke, a very good runner. He had a medal that I was fascinated by, from the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Marathon.

“He was sixth in that race, which was bigger than the previous year’s Olympic marathon.

“Then you had Fergie O’Donoghue, who was a very good soccer player. He found one at home – he had played U15 for Ireland against England and they were given centenary medals.

“It’s all unusual and interesting things like that, even how the medals have progressed over the years. Like, for example, the early camogie and ladies’ football medals weren’t great – when they got them they were gold and after three or four weeks they were brass!”