Jim Stynes:REACTION TO the death in Australia earlier this week at the age of 45 of Jim Stynes indicates the profound impact the Dubliner had on the life of his adopted country. Next Tuesday will see him laid to rest after a state funeral in the capital of Victoria, Melbourne, where he spent his life since leaving this country at the age of 18 in 1984.
His profile as a prominent footballer, sports administrator, philanthropist and charity worker was amplified by his very public struggle with serious illness for most of the last three years of his life and although not unexpected, his death unleashed a wave of shock, public sadness and affection.
Twice, in 2001 and 2003, honoured as Victorian of the Year he also received national government awards: the Australian Sports Medal in 2000, the Centenary Medal a year later and in 2007 the Medal of the Order of Australia.
Born in Dublin in 1966 to Brian Stynes and Theresa (Tess; née Davey), from Tipperary, he lived in the Dublin suburb of Ballyboden. His parents were Gaelic games enthusiasts – a grand uncle, Joe, had played on the 1923 All-Ireland winning Dublin team – and his father, a public servant, had played for the Civil Service club. Jim was a member of Ballyboden St Enda’s from a young age and his father was among his coaches.
He attended Ballyroan Boys National School and afterwards De La Salle Churchtown, where he was a promising rugby player, lining out for the school in the 1984 Leinster Senior Cup against eventual winners Terenure.
The Irish Times had this to say: “De La Salle, with second row James Stynes doing splendid work out of touch, had Terenure pinned down in their own territory for much of the initial period.”
But football was Stynes’s main focus as a youngster and he found himself involved in Ballyboden’s first juvenile coaching structure on a team, managed by his father and Kieran O’Malley, that won the club’s first juvenile title, the 1981 under-16 Dublin championship.
One of his early coaches remembers: “Jim always played midfield. He could field everything, being tall and very strong and fiercely determined.”
It was no surprise the county selectors came looking for him and in 1984 he was part of what is still the last Dublin team to win the All-Ireland minor title.
When the Melbourne Demons advertised for potential recruits in Ireland at the end of that year, an initiative credited to the great Australian rules footballer Ron Barassi, Jim Stynes replied and was selected from a trial in Dublin by Demons’ board member Barry Richardson. He departed for Melbourne on the first weekend in November 1984 – coincidentally the precise centenary of the GAA’s foundation in Thurles.
He joined former Kerry minor Seán Wight – who by sad coincidence died at the age of 47 last July also from an aggressive cancer – as pioneers of the so-called Irish Experiment.
After two years of intensive training and lining out for the VFA club Prahran, Jim Stynes made his debut for Melbourne in 1987. He made sufficient progress to feature for the club in the closing stages of that year’s championship where he was involved in an infamous incident towards the end of the preliminary final against Hawthorn. Inexperienced in the game at the top level he “walked across” a Hawthorn mark and the ensuing 15-metre penalty brought the kick within range for the kicker and Melbourne were beaten. There is a famous photograph of a shell-shocked Stynes entering the dressing room after the match and coach John Northey is shouting and pointing at him. By a quirk of fate the crestfallen young player would end up marrying the sister of the photographer.
By the following season he had recovered to the extent that he was named Melbourne’s best player in the grand final albeit that the club lost heavily. It was the prelude to a long, hugely successful career including the highlights of winning the Brownlow Medal (AFL Player of the Year) in 1991 and setting a record for consecutive appearances of 244. The record was hard earned, as in 1993 he sustained a rib and sternum injury that necessitated six weeks’ recuperation but he turned up to training the following Friday.
Playing as a ruck man, he helped to redefine the position. Up until then it was usually the preserve of big, powerful footballers of limited mobility whose primary task was to secure possession. Jim Stynes had the athleticism to move with the ball and the skill to kick it accurately. He was four times the club player of the year and was also selected on the all-time Melbourne team.
He was unsurprisingly an enthusiastic supporter of the international rules hybrid, devised by the AFL and GAA, to give an international outlet to players in both of the indigenous games. He played for Ireland in 1990 and Australia in 1987 and 1998 before becoming a selector and coach for the Australia teams up until 2006.
Having retired from playing in 1998 Jim Stynes maintained his connection with the game as a coach and as AFL anti-racism officer. In 2008 he agreed to take on the presidency of the Melbourne club, by this stage experiencing severe financial difficulties. Despite being struck by terminal illness he stayed in the office until a few months ago by which stage the debt had been cleared.
In 1994 he had jointly founded the Reach Foundation with film director Paul Currie. Established to help young people fulfil their potential, the foundation has worked with an estimated 500,000 youngsters over nearly 20 years. Stynes said he got the idea from memories of how summer college in the Gaeltacht had, through encouragement and outdoor activity, helped him.
Among the tributes paid to him by those who had been helped by the foundation were: “Jim believed in me when I didn’t have enough faith in myself and felt like nobody else did either” and “He remembers everyone’s name; he may have seen you only once but he makes the effort to remember everyone’s name.” There was shock in July 2009 when he and his wife, Samantha Ludbey, announced at a press conference that he was suffering from metastatic cancer and although he outlasted the initial prognosis, he was visibly suffering from the effects when greeting the Ireland and Australia teams before last autumn’s first test in Melbourne.
Speaking in parliament last week Australian prime minister Julia Gillard said that she spoken on St Patrick’s Day about the Irish larrikins we celebrate in Australia, who are “larger than life, sceptical, iconoclastic, egalitarian and defiant. Those words do summarise Jim Stynes – particularly the word defiant. Defiant in the face of his illness, showing remarkable courage.”
Stynes is survived by his wife Samantha and children Matisse and Tiernan and also by his extended family, who have all moved to Australia at various stages, parents Brian and Tess and siblings Brian, David, Sharon, Terri-Anne and Dearbhla.
Jim Stynes: born April 23rd, 1966; died March 20th, 2012