He doesn’t give a damn about you.
You can come to meet him and he’ll run straight out over you. You can stand him up and he’ll just knock it over you and over the bar as well. You get a teammate to double up on him and he’ll just saunter into the space between the two of you before playing the pass that suited that particular moment the most. Then he’s gone striding away again like a racehorse and he’ll do all of this like you weren’t even there to trouble him, like he didn’t even bother to notice your attempt to stop him and like he doesn’t get tired like the rest of us.
You can go and pull your hurl across him all you want and he’ll win a free. That’s not even being stupid because what is a tackler supposed to do when they’re faced with a man like Cian Lynch?
The Patrickswell club man is at one with the game of hurling at the moment. His hurley is his weapon and the sliotar is his microphone. He can make that ball talk, he can make that ball scream scream whatever way he wants it to.
He has a better first touch than any other hurler in the country right now and any ball that comes within reaching distance of his 30 whatever inch hurley will be coming straight back into his hands and into his stride. And then Limerick supporters can relax. The opposition can start worrying.
When he gets that ball into his hands and gallops, there’s always going to be trouble. He’ll always have time on the ball because he knows that he has what 29 other lads on the field wants and that alone commands respect.
He treats it like he cares for it, like he appreciates it.
The Mary I student is in the thick of the action in midfield for the ascending Limerick senior hurling team and he’s earning himself plenty of admirers for his swagger, his confidence and his sheer ability.
Colm Parkinson is blown away by him, JJ Delaney too and after Lynch pulled the strings to wonderful effect to destroy Waterford at the weekend, the lads attempted to describe his magic.
“I can’t get over this fella,” said Wooly.
“I can’t get over the composure he has, he’s being tackled and it’s like he doesn’t even care that there’s someone tackling him. He has a real confidence, a real swagger about him,” said Parkinson.
“Where a lot of lads might go ‘right, I’m running into a dead-end here, I’m turning back around.’ He’ll just stay going and swat your man away and throw it up and tap it over the bar.”
Kilkenny legend Delaney made an interesting point about his free-flowing running style. Such a graceful mover, Cian Lynch doesn’t even have to go full throttle to leave lads sitting.
“He doesn’t look like he’s sprinting, he’s just drifting away from players. He’s a street hurler, he wouldn’t want to rise the ball, he’d want to flick it up and he’d do something different with it,” said JJ.
Here was a clear example of that from the Cork game a fortnight ago.
And here against Waterford last weekend.
Clips via RTÉ and The GAA (Twitter)
And Lynch will bring his teammates into the game like few others can. Very unselfish, he’s a master of the one handed hurley pass.
“I’d say if you were a full forward and he was on the ball, you just know you’re going to get quality ball off him. He never really wastes the ball. He has the skill to back it up,” concluded JJ.
Lynch’s class even led to Wooly discounting the result of the online poll, and rewarding Cian Lynch with the Paddy Power Performance of the Weekend, despite Peter Duggan getting 20& more of the vote than him.
This even came after Lynch didn’t reply to Wooly’s text to come on the show earlier in the year.
“I texted him earlier in the year, he read the text and didn’t even bother getting back to me. I’ve loved watching him since his debut, he’s been outstanding since then.”
He’s earned the fanfare.
You can listen to this interview and much more from Monday’s GAA Hour Show right here.
