Nowadays it seems that any pub which boasts Sky and splashes a bit of Man. Utd. or some other so-called big name club memorabilia up around the house can turn around and call themselves "The Sportsman's Bar". However there are few true havens for the sports' fan and one of them surely has to be Edgeworthstown's own unique and truly inimitable Sportsman's, which for the past 25 years saw the famous Johnny Lynn hold court. He's a man who has had both feet in the worlds of horse racing and GAA circles for the bulk of his 71 years and when he finally retired from behind the bar on Monday week last it was indeed fitting that many of the biggest names from those worlds closest to his heart should have turned out to pay tribute to him. There are very few who don't know Johnny Lynn but we can reveal that there is a dark secret known only to a handful of his closest friends and that is that one of Mostrim's loyalist supporters isn't in fact a true son of Edgeworth terrain but rather he's a born and bred Abbeylara man. His passion for horse racing wasn't an accident with his father probably one of the country's most prolific and successful jockeys of his era. Long before Frank Berry, he was the region's racing icon and on the day that Padraig Pearse and his men were defending the GPO in Dublin, Johnny Lynn remembers that his father rode All Sorts to victory in the Irish Grand National. He was also one of the handful of Irish jockeys who have ridden in both the Irish Derby and National - a feat that would be unimaginable today because of the pressure on jockeys to maintain inordinately low weights for the flat. Lynn's life features a series of highs and great memories and achievements but nor is it without its tragedies and heartache. He remembers how he was in his teens when his father died from cancer. It was a harrowing blow for a young mother, Kathy Lynn, and her seven children. This was an era when racing jockeys earned little and rode out of passion rather than commercial gain and their lifestyle was far removed from the comforts and security enjoyed by their contemporaries.
Second eldest in family of seven Johnny Lynn was the second eldest in a family of seven. It wasn't an affluent upbringing by any means though he never "went hungry". The move from Abbeylara to Cam, Edgeworthstown came a short time after Johnny's birth and saw the family take up home in a small rural cottage in Cam. There was no land with it and it was simply a base for Jack Lynn's family while he made his way around the tracks of Ireland and England. His death was to be a truly traumatic period for the family and in particular their mother, Kathy (her youngest child, Billy, was only two months old at this point), who was now faced with rearing a young family. Johnny recalls that a Mrs Nugent from Enfield, then one of the biggest names in racing, called to the family home and offered to take on two of his brothers, Mickey and Paddy, at her stables. It was a gesture indicative of the esteem in which their late father was held within racing circles. Racing ran deep in the Lynn veins with Jack, their father, the Irish Champion jockey on a number of occasions and two of his brothers where also notable pilots. It was no surprise so when Johnny himself decided at 18 to try his hand in the racing game though not directly in the saddle and in 1947 he left to work at Dick Dawson's yard in Newbury. It was one of the top stables in England and here again his father's reputation stood him in good stead. "Everyone there was very good to me and I enjoyed the work but I just got itchy feet and I wanted to see brighter lights." Nor was the money fantastic - just over £4 a week and when he met a few Irish lads in Newbury one day and they told him of a job on an oil refinery in Southampton offering £15 a week, there was to be no holding him.
More robust than stylish Lynn's other great passion is of course Gaelic Games and in particular, football. As a young lad in Mostrim he played football right up until minor level but he was never noted for his class but rather for his robustness. "I wasn't the most stylish of footballers but I reckoned that I always got the job done just the same." It was while he was working in Southampton that he met up with a Kerryman who told him about the GAA in London and of one club in particular, the London based St. Mary's, then one of the top sides in England. "I never knew that there was football in England." He readily agreed to join the Mary's club and it soon opened up a whole new circle of friends and a social circle for him in a foreign land. He relished the cameraderie and in time established himself as one the Mary's greatest players and eventually he became club chairman and team manager. While he was the first Longford man to play with St. Mary's, he initiated an association that has survived as strong as ever to this day between club and county. He remembers that he was one of only two team members not from Kerry and he established himself as a key member of a side that went on to win two Championships.
Captained London in All-Ireland Final Probably the high point in his playing career however came in 1956 when he captained the London side that lost to Monaghan in an All-Ireland Final played in Croke Park. He played centerfield with another Mostrim native, Christy Greene while Tony McQuaid of Drumlish was another Longford link with the team. He went on to chair the club and manage the senior team for seven years and in that time they were to win three London Championships. As he rose to prominence in the club he started to involve several other players of Longford origin. "Christy Greene was the first to come to us and after that we has Jackie Devine, Sean Mulvihill, Seamus Logan, John Heneghan, Jody Sheridan, Terry McGovern, P.J. Quinn, Paddy Macken and Liam Mulvihill to name but a few." And as he told the Leader: "There was so much emigration in the 1960s it would have been impossible not to have a good team." Indeed many of the players then playing for London clubs were also notable inter-county players back home and invariably the clubs took it upon themselves to ensure that the players were back in Ireland in time to play county matches. "As a Longford man I suppose I had a special commitment to getting our players home and I would have gone out of the way to ensure that players were back home to play with the county." Several years in the building trade behind him, Johnny Lynn decided to brave it, launching himself as a sub-contractor and he quickly established a good reputation for himself winning work from many of the big and well established contractors. "You could say that I worked hard but there were a few good breaks along the way and it was a time when the economy was coming out of a slump and there was plenty of building work."
Bought pub for £20,000 Like every other Irishman away from home, Johnny Lynn worked towards coming back to Ireland and in 1973 he purchased what is now the Sportsman's Inn in Edgeworthstown for what was then the sizeable sum of £20,000 - it was an ironic move for the Mostrim man and as he remembered "I hadn't the first clue about running a pub - I had been in a good few of them and probably drank in as many pubs as any man but as for running one, I hadn't a clue." He engaged the services of local couple Frank and Mary Whitney and they were to run the premises for a year until he came home the following summer and indeed they have continued to work on the premises with him ever since. Back home he immediately got involved with the local GAA club and his first year back saw him as a selector on the senior team. Alas it was a relationship that wasn't to last. Recalls Johnny, "I was too thick and I would have ended up with no one coming in if I stayed at it. I go to all the games and I am president of the club but apart from that I never got very involved." By his own admission the GAA has been very good to him and in particular his business. "I had good times through football but I have to say that if it wasn't for the GAA I would not have been able to keep the bar open. This was always the GAA pub and any team that ever played here would come up afterwards and even teams going through would stop here - that's something I was always very proud of and thankful for."
Mostrim man's huge popularity He similarly enjoys the patronage of the racing set and in particular the older faces on account of the family's unique ties with racing. The cosy Edgeworthstown pub is a virtual shrine to a racing world of yesteryear with beautiful black and white prints of his family members in their racing attire adorning the bar. He still revels in his days at the races and over the years would have had shares in a number of horses but without any real or notable success and he reckons that the cost involved now is prohibitive for most members of the public. There's no doubting Johnny Lynn's popularity - the cards, messages of goodwill and phone calls have literally been flooding in since he called it a day and he took part in a special Frankie Kilbride- Shannonside Radio broadcast from the pub. He told the Leader; "To be honest I don't know what all the fuss is about - you know that some people say I am the thickest man in Longford and there are a few who would say that I am the thickest in Ireland." 71 years old, Johnny Lynn has no intention of pulling over the blinds and simply fading away. His nephew, Gerry, has taken over the running of the bar but you can expect to find the 'boss man' in for his few pints each evening and he'll no doubt put that 'Old Age Pensioners' pass to good use as he makes his way around the Irish race tracks. "I have been to every track in England and thankfully I don't gamble as much now as I used to but I love to be at the races, meeting the people and seeing the horses. It is something that has no equal
TRAGIC DEATHS OVERSHADOW A REMARKABLE LINK WITH RACING
The Lynn family boast an unrivalled link with the horse racing world for nearly a hundred years. Johnny Lynn himself spent a number of years with one of the top horse racing stables in Newbury, England, but he was to leave stable life behind him for the lure of the greener and more lucrative pastures of a Southampton oil refinery. 72 next birthday, Johnny Lynn is a passionate follower of horse racing and he can rightly claim to have been at every track in England - a notable achievement in itself and he cites Newbury as his favourite track - "because it would have been the first that I went to and I have an affinity with it." Surprisingly Johnny Lynn's passion for racing has survived his family's amazing losses to the track. His uncle, Willie died after a fall at Gowran Park, while his brother, Mickey was killed at Sandown and a cousin Johnny suffered a similar end at Southwell. Mickey and brother, Paddy, rode in an era when the jockey's role was a very precarious one. The stringent safety measures adopted for todays jockeys were still a long way off and even the most mandatory of precautions such as safety helmets were not introduced until several years after the Mostrim native's death. Said Johnny: "It was a different era and there was no real emphasis on jockeys' safety - it was a fact of life and the death of a jockey was not an unusual event but when it happened to a family member it brought it all home to you and it effected every one in the family very much." Indeed the death of his brother, Mickey, was certainly a factor in influencing Paddy to retire from the profession the following season. Out of the saddle however Paddy remained involved with horses and indeed his son, also named Mickey, is married to Kathy Bradley-Lynn, the English based rider who for a number of years now has been ranked as Ireland's number one international dressage rider - rather like ballet on horseback and probably the single most demanding equestrian discipline and undoubtedly the greatest test of horsemanship.
Friendship with Peter Bromley It is indicative of the esteem in which the Lynn family are held in racing circles but it is also and indication of the nature and genuine good naturedness of Johnny Lynn, in that he can count the experienced and much admired racing commentator, Peter Bromley, as a personal friend. When I visited recently, Johnny showed me the Christmas card he had received from Bromley and his wife but probably the most touching item in his collection of memories and memorabilia is the letter he got from Bromley in the mid-1980's along with a photo Bromley had come across and which featured Johnny's brother, Mickey, during one of his most bizarre wins ever. The venue was Sandown Park and a Racing Post report of the time declared: "Mickey Lynn's Disappearing Act! Yes, this National Hunt jockey performed it at Sandown Park yesterday for the first time in his life and he hopes the last, when riding brilliantly Son of Marie to victory." Lynn actually disappeared from the punters' view when Colonel WH Whitbread's horse landed awkwardly with about a mile to go. Mickey went over Son of Marie's left shoulder and lost both his irons and just managed to prevent himself falling off by hanging on to the reins and keeping his right leg across the horse. Then he miraculously heaved himself back into the saddle and recovered one stirrup and then the other in the nick of time as 'up and over' - horse and jockey coped with the water jump. Bromley the former jockey and latter day commentator clearly admired the Lynn family and over the years a great bond developed with the Mostrim family and it was be who actually collected the heart broken mother, Kathy Lynn, from the boat station, when she came over from Ireland to bury her young son after his tragic fall at Sandown Park. The racing press of the day were clearly upset at the young rider's passing and wrote the Racing Post: "Lynn(23) served his apprenticeship with Barney Nugent at the Ward, Co. Dublin and he was injured yesterday while riding Glamorgan at Sandown Park. He fell heavily and was rushed to hospital with a fractured skull. He rode about 60 winners under NH rules and he was attached to Capt. Gerald Balding's Weyhill stable, and was regarded by the trainer as "one of the best jockeys I ever had." Their father, Jack Lynn, was probably one of the top Irish jockeys of his time and he won the Irish national in 1916 on the day that Padraig Pearse and his men were defending the GPO and while his death was not directly linked to racing, his passing in his early fifties was a shattering blow for a mother and her young family, who faced the harrowing prospect of trying to survive on the measly savings from a profession that then paid very badly indeed.
A Haven for racing fans The Sportsman's Inn in Edgeworthstown is a haven for racing fans with excellent black and white photos dominating the walls and Johnny's rare collection of newspaper cuttings and memorabilia is a priceless collection and insight into the remarkable careers of this unique Edgeworthstown family. Jack Lynn wasn't the first in the family to go into racing but he made an amazing impact. He was noted for his commitment and discipline and he was unique in that he enjoyed the same level of success on the flat as he did across the fences and he's one of only a handful of jockeys who would have ridden in both the English derby and National in the same year. One of Johnny Lynn's favourite newspaper cuttings refers to his father and centres around the two great passions of the publican's life, racing and football. It's a sports' trivia piece that sought to establish who was the first person to avail of the 'paid for seating' at Croke Park in 1910. The piece appeared in the now defunct Evening Press and reads: "……We know who the first person to occupy a chair on that November day in 1910 was the former jockey, Jack Lynn. He had broken a leg at Aintree some short time before, insisted on leaving a Liverpool hospital to see the game. To avoid getting into difficulties with his smashed leg amid the crowds, he went early to the Jones Road entrance that day and was assisted onto the sideline, where he made GAA history by becoming the first paying customer to take a sideline seat in what is now Croke Park."