Pat Ryan profile: the people who know the Cork boss best on what makes him tick
MAN IN THE ARENA: Cork manager Pat Ryan during the All-Ireland SHC finalagainst Clare last year. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
They know him as well as anyone. His passions. Roguery. Philosophy. Sincerity. Why everyone, including Rob Downey and the whole Cork panel, seems to love him “to bits” and what he loves in turn.
Back when Ronan Dwane was on the panel that delivered the 1999 All-Ireland title to Cork, it was a running joke within the group how Pat Ryan and himself along with Mark Landers would invariably end up in a corner and have as much a quarrel as a debate about something related to hurling and Cork GAA. Who’s the best wing back in Ireland? Who’s the best wing back to come out of their beloved east Cork? How should our county championships be run? “We’d be in a bar in Thailand on the team holiday at three in the morning,” says Dwane, “and you’d see lads looking over: ‘The boys still at it. Typical!’” Dwane and Ryan still talk almost every day. Sometimes there’s an element of official business about their conversations. One of Dwane’s first acts upon succeeding Kevin O’Donovan as coaching officer back in 2017 was to co-opt Ryan onto the county’s coaching committee and later a committee on the county’s competition structures: after all their pub talk and big ideas about how the game should be played and how the games should be run, no better man or chance to address such matters.
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