New Blackrock president Roger Ryan honoured to serve

If all goes to plan, new Blackrock president Roger Ryan will be serenading fellow club members with his party-piece of Blue Suede Shoes in the late autumn of 2024 as they celebrate a county title win.

It’s fitting that a man so deeply immersed in music – he has written a column on country music for The Echo for four decades – was on one of his regular trips to Nashville, Tennessee when he got the call asking if he would accept the honour.

“One morning, at 3.30am, my phone rang – it was Conor Hurley,” Roger says.

“When I told him where I was, he said he’d keep it short! He said that the committee had decided to recommend me as incoming president, if that was alright with me.

“He said it was coming from the players and that was enough for me. I’ve always maintained that players are a club’s greatest asset – if you don’t have them, nothing else is of any consequence.

“I was doubly delighted – to be proposed in the first place and then to have it coming from the players was an extra bonus.

“I’m hoping – and I’ve impressed this upon the players! – that it would be nice to mark my first year in office with a county title. I could claim credit for it!”

Roger succeeds his great friend Jimmy Brohan, who died in September.

“To follow in Jimmy Brohan’s footsteps is a huge honour,” he says.

“Anywhere you go, once you mention the Rockies, there’s a huge respect, throughout the whole country.

“I was secretary when John Bennett was chairman and, anywhere you went with him, he was known either as a singer or as a Rockie!

“Jimmy Brohan, the respect that there is for him is just amazing but he was such a lovely man.”

Making his accession all the more impressive is that he is a “blow-in” – a native of Tallow, he took a job with M&P O’Sullivan in January 1960. The first people to call to his digs were Ned Cotter and Jimmy Brohan and it went from there.

“It was a God-send to me to join the club,” Rogers says.

“I came up from West Waterford as a raw recruit into the big city – I used to be lucky to get up once a year, bringing my mother up for shopping.

“I started playing junior and progressed to senior and then, as luck would have it, we won the county in 1961.

“Sport is one of the greatest ways for making friends, not only in your own club but other clubs.

“I was a total loner coming here, living in digs on the Old Blackrock Road – I used to play music, so I was banished to the attic with my record-player!”

After taking up a job with Suttons, Roger spent time working in Tipperary, playing hurling for Holycross-Ballycahill and Thurles Sarsfields. Once he and his wife Ethel – who sadly died in 2003 – returned to Cork in 1969, the link to the Rockie was re-established and never broken.

As well Blackrock’s most recent county victory in 2020, he cites the 1999 win, ending a 14-year wait, as one of the most emotional. Roger was secretary around that time and later had a long stint as PRO and most recently on the grounds committee.

“There’s a gang of that meet every Wednesday – we do as little as we can and then have some tea!” he laughs, but that social aspect is one he is keen to develop.

“We’ve started off coffee mornings on a Friday, the last one of the month.

“It’s a chance for anyone who wants to come and at the last one, we had more than 50 at it.

“It’s great to see so many of the retired players coming as well. We’re the longest-established and the biggest club in the parish. We’re part of the parish and everybody’s welcome.

“People do tend to think that the club bars are for members only but we welcome all our friends.”

It was something he was grateful to experience, although the methods employed by his late team-mate Florrie O’Mahony were somewhat unorthodox.

“That’s what I’ve always appreciated about the club – I felt at home fairly quickly,” he says.

“I had Tony Connolly across the road and then Florrie O’Mahony, Noel O’Connell and Dan Brennan used to come in from Ballincollig in a Volkswagen and collect me.

“We had an old railway for a dressing room and that was it. We had only one pitch back then but the complex now is out of this world!

“Billy Galligan, from Charleville, joined at the same time as me. Our first match was against Avondhu in Mallow and we togged off at the Hi-B. I was shy and intimidated by all these fellas around me.

“I had my top off, ready to put on my jersey, and I felt this trickle of water down my back – Florrie O’Mahony had a jug and he said, ‘As a member of the Blackrock team I christen thee!’”

It was a powerful baptism, leading to a lifetime of memories – with more to come.