Late Austin Flynn

Waterford G.A.A. mourned last week following the death of Austin Flynn.

The Abbeyside Club man who donned the number three shirt when Waterford last won the All-Ireland Senior Hurling title in 1959 was widely regarded as one of the greatest defenders in the game, not just within the county but across the country.

Austin came to prominence as a hurler in his teenage years having learned the skills of the game from Michael Foley, a teacher in the school in Abbeyside when was a young boy and developed them further when he went to secondary school at Dungarvan CBS on a scholarship.

Born in 1933, he helped Abbeyside capture the Junior Hurling County Championship in 1950, beating Dunhill in the Final.

With no Intermediate grade at the time so the Village Club moved straight up to the Senior grade the following year and despite his youthfulness he quickly established himself as an important member of the side over the following years, playing a vital role in the side as Abbeyside reached County Senior Hurling Finals in 1955, 1957, 1964 and 1969 but they were to lose out to Mount Sion in all four finals.

In his club colours he win two Sargant Cup (a competition that sadly no longer holds the prestigious that it once did in the Déise County) in 1963 and 1965. In the latter year he also helped his club win the county Intermediate Football Championship. 

His ability as a club player quickly caught the eye of inter county selectors and it was on his way home from the pictures one evening in 1952 that he learned that he was called up to be part of the Waterford panel to play Clare the following day, news given to him by fellow Abbeyside Club members while passing through the village. He was named as a sub for the game but came on in a game which ended in a draw and he kept his place for the replay, a game that Waterford lost out in.

Austin failed to play another championship game for Waterford again until 1955 but once he came back into the side he was like a rock in the Waterford full back line defending the goalkeeper as best he could in a time when goalkeepers did not get the protection they did now. He remained an important member of the panel until the second half of the following decade.

When it comes to honours won during his career, Austin was more successful at inter county level than he was at club level. He won three Munster Senior Hurling Final medals (1957, 1959 and 1963), an Oireachtas Cup (a competition that ran between 1939 and 1999) in 1962 and a National League Medal the following year. He was also selected on the Munster team that won the Railway Cup completion in 1960.

But the piece de resistance of his collection of medals won has to be the All-Ireland Hurling medal win in 1959 when Waterford beat Kilkenny aster a replay at Croke Park on October 4, the same day that the Russians launched Luna 3, a spacecraft which helped photograph the far side of the moon.

Since their launch in 1971, Waterford has won All-Stars in fourteen of the fifteen positions on the field of play. The only position Waterford has not won an All-Star is at full back. But in the unofficial All-Stars, the Cuchulainn Awards which were presented between 1983 and 1967 inclusive, Austin was named three times (1963, 1965 and 1967) on the best team of the year in the number three position. In the two years that Austin missed out on selection, the full back place was taken by Kilkenny’s Pa Dillon.

Surprisingly Austin was not named on the Waterford Hurling Team of the Century (1884-1984). Erins Own Charlie Ware was selected at full back on that team flanked by Mount Sion’s Andy Fleming and Jackie Goode from Dungarvan in the two corner back positions. But when the Waterford Team of the Millennium (1884-2000) was selected Austin was named at full back, flanked by the same two corner backs as picked in the team selected 16 years earlier, and as the GAA heads towards the 150 anniversary of its foundation, if a team is picked then, its possible that Austin will once more be selected in the full back position.

In 2017 Austin was honoured by the Munster Council when they indicted him into the Munster Hall of Fame with a special presentation.

For all his successes on the field of play Austin remained a very modest man and was one of life’s true gentlemen. He was a great conversationalist and none more so when the conversation involved hurling, and whether you had a box load of medals won or if you never played hurling and football, Austin was always willing to listen to what a person had to say as well as express his own opinion.

Like Ned Power who played behind him on many a Waterford team, Austin had a great interest in the development of underage hurling. For many years he was a frequent visitor to where games were played. On many occasions he was spotted speaking to groups of players, sometimes a whole team, where he would heap praise of the players and encourage them to keep learning the skills of the game.

On more than one occasion in recent years Austin expressed a fear that he would die without seeing Waterford win a third or more All-Ireland Senior hurling title. As the surviving members of the 1959 team began to grow smaller he often said that he did not want to be one of the last people in the county to win that exclusive All-Ireland medal. Alas for Austin it has happened as there is now only a handful of men in the county that own an All-Ireland senior Hurling medal at the time of Austin’s death.

Away from the world of hurling and football, Austin spent many years working in the hospital in Dungarvan. While many of those that work in the world of health in offices as Austin did are relatively unknown to patients and visitors to the hospital, Austin was well known to the staff at both St Joseph’s (the County Home) and St Vincent’s (the District) two hospitals on the one grounds, and it was not just the staff he was known to but the patients and visitors as well. He was also known to those who would have to call to the hospital for appliances to be used by those living at home who could not do so if they were not provided with them.

Austin was predeceased by his wife Sybil, his daughter Mary, his parents Gusty and Bridget as well as his siblings John, Michael, Ned and Kathleen. He is survived by his daughters Janice and Anita, his son-in-law John, his grandchildren Cormac, Cathal, Clara, Gus and Róisín, his nephews and nieces, his brother-in-law Tomás Walsh and his countless friends and acquaintances.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.