Remembering a hero who never grew old

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Great heroes really should never grow old and early last month when I heard on an early morning news bulletin that one Muhammad Ali, or Cassius Clay as many of us remembered him, had passed away, it set off a little journey back in time when the only media outlets available were the Evening Herald, the old Philips radio as well as black and white TVs.

The black and white televisions though were in very short supply in the Spring of 1964 when Cassius Clay made the huge transition from being an Olympic winning light-heavyweight at the 1960 Rome Olympics to winning the world heavyweight title against Sonny Liston.

It was in the aftermath of that victory against Liston – a mean enough looking giant who reputedly was in the grip of ‘The Mob’ – that word began to spread about Cassius Clay into little villages and homes in the West of Ireland and we all scurried around looking for pieces of information about this man.

His second fight with Liston, many of us managed to see, although I presume it must have been a recording, given the time difference, and a real controversial one it was too. The fight was over after about two minutes of the first round when Liston went down after what some commentators deemed a phantom blow, but as we watched the two minutes of action in a neighbour’s house as a bunch of impressionable six and seven-year-olds, it was the greatest punch ever thrown.

Somewhere along the way between those two fights, he converted to the Islamic religion and changed his name to Muhammad Ali, a move as young lads we didn’t really approve of, as Cassius Clay just had a kind of a tone to it, that linked him to ancient Greek or Roman warriors.

Anyway we got over that, but as we advanced through the national school years, there was no sign of the black and white television, arriving at our house. My father was a real radio man and an Evening Herald fanatical reader and it was really galling to hear the ads on the radio for RTV rentals on the old Philips. The jingle still rings in my head: “RTV have the sets and the service, so rent from RTV.”

All the while, Ali was winning fights against the likes of George Chuvalo, Henry Cooper (who floored him with a thumping left hook), Brian London and a German called Karl Mildenberger. A gang of us were little nomads along the road, switching our allegiance from one television house to the next, careful not to over-extend their penchant for hospitality.

Of course those were wonderful times in sport for a young lad in Galway with All-Ireland successes coming thick and fast on the football fields as we kicked every ball in our mind’s eye with the likes of Enda Colleran, ‘Johneen Donnellan’, Mattie McDonagh and John Keenan.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.