Jim Stynes

I never met Jim Stynes and to be honest, I’m not sure I’ve even seen him in the flesh but he’s a hero of mine, so I thought I’d mark his passing.

Before I moved to Melbourne, I was conscious that I needed to pick an AFL team to support. It’s like registering for tax when you move to another country. If you don’t have a team you are excluded from most Monday morning conversations at work and are looked upon like one of those kids at school who liked stamp collecting and spent the breaks doing his homework and not kicking a worn out tennis ball around the school yard.

I plumped for Carlton because it was bottom of the league at the time (I’m a sucker for underdogs) and was home at the time to Setanta O’Hailpin. Over the years, I’ve been asked by many Melburnians to justify my choice of team. Arguments have been put forward for many alternatives. The criminals who funded Collingwood in the thirties and forties were Irish criminals so I was implored to follow them. They also had Marty Clarke on their playing list, although he comes from County Down, which is a neighbouring county to my own and I’ve never tired of telling Australians that neighbours in Ireland are rarely friends.

Essendon and St Kilda also had a significant Irish contingent on their playing lists. The strongest argument however, was that I should support the Melbourne Football Club. It is allegedly the oldest football club in the world, in any code. It is a former powerhouse that has fallen on hard times. So all the boxes about history and of being a sleeping giant about to awaken were ticked. On the flip side, they are considered to be the snobbiest club in the city and many people blame their poor attendance numbers in July to the fact that many of their supporters are busy sking.

But they did have Jimmy Stynes and that was almost enough to swing it. I had heard of Jim before I moved to Australia. He comes from a famous Dublin footballing family and I cheered for his brother Brian on many occasions when he togged out as a rampaging centre forward for my hometown team of Dundalk.

Jim is the hero of the family, however. His record is legendary. Played the most consecutive games in AFL history, was the only non-Australian to win the player of the year award and as President he saved his club from extinction. Outside of football, he established the Reach foundation which helps disadvantaged kids by providing social outlets and summer camps. He apparently based this on his own experience of visiting Gaeltacht areas in the west of Ireland as a teenager.

Although I’m pleased to say that Australian camps don’t enforce the speaking of Irish on reluctant teenagers and doesn’t employ fierce landladies to ensure 10pm curfews. Jim received the Order of Australia for his charity work which is just about as big an honour as you can achieve in this country and rarely bestowed of foreigners.

But it was in the dark world of cancer that I was most attracted to his light. He was diagnosed in 2009 with a virulent form of cancer that seemed to declare an angry and vindictive war on his body. In typical fashion he fought it like a caged animal and defied all doctors’ expectations until today, when he finally succumbed to the beast. I had my own brush with the Big C in 2010 of course and feel humbled to even mention my single tumour incident in the same sentence as his monstrous struggle. He had 12 tumours removed from his brain alone and every other organ in his body was attacked.

But when I was feeling down after my own brush with cancer, I looked towards Jim Stynes for inspiration. He went through his struggles publically and with immense bravery, including a documentary which introduced the wider world to the indignities that cancer sufferers must endure.

Whatever I went through I could comfort myself with the knowledge that Jim Stynes was going through something worse.

It’s ironic that Jim finally passed away in the week that St Patrick is being celebrated throughout the world and when Ireland has its annual showcase on the world stage. A few weeks ago an Irish backpacker drowned in Melbourne while trying to swim across the Yarra River after a night on the beer. It portrayed an image of Irish people that was not exactly favourable and I was asked by more than one person if it was normal for young people from my country to do stupid things.

Jim Stynes evokes the opposite response among Australians. They admired and loved him and more importantly connected all his positive qualities to his Irishness. His courage, his strength, his empathy and his social conscience. While I’m sad today, I’m also extremely proud to be an Irishman in Australia. Jim showed that we’re not all drunken buffoons. That some of us can write great books, like Tom Keneally, discover new places like Robert O’Hara Burke and introduce Trade Unionism and worker’s rights like Peter Lalor.
But when the lists of the top 100 Irish Australians are put together in years to come, Jim Stynes name will be at the top. You played a great game Jim. Enjoy a few cold ones in the great club room in the sky.