'Are you the Champ's son?': Micheál Martin speaks of influence his late father as he prepares to become Taoiseach once again

Forty years ago, a 24-year-old teacher from Turner’s Cross was canvassing in Ballyphehane; running in the local election, head full of bright ideas, hands full of policy documents, and all anyone wanted to hear about was his father.

Incoming Taoiseach Micheál Martin re: “I was out of college thinking I was going to change the world, but the only thing they wanted to know was ‘Are you the Champ’s son?’

“You’d say ‘Yeah, I am,’ and then they’d say ‘I was there the night he beat Bygraves’.

“That was a refrain you’d hear going through Ballyphehane, or if you’d meet people in Cork somewhere else, they’d say ‘I was there the night he beat Bygraves’.”

The night he beat Bygraves, 74 years ago, was Friday, January 12, 1951, when the Glen Boxing Club was hosting boxers from Birkenhead and other clubs at Cork City Hall. 

There was pandemonium, with the venue packed out as a large crowd was left standing outside.

“Boxing at the time was a very popular sport, and the workers would come up from the factories, they’d have a sandwich and a few pints in the pubs and they’d be trying to get into the tournaments,” Mr Martin says.

The Cork Examiner reported the next day that there had been “amazing scenes” outside City Hall, where the official capacity was 1,200.

“So great was the throng seeking ission that the ticket holders only got through with great difficulty after long delays and even then, some had to stand throughout, it being impossible to reach their seats, some 3,000 being crammed into the hall.”

The crowd “became a seething, swaying mass, in which women and children had to take their chance of being crushed half to death … and even competitors stood little chance of getting in”.

The Cork Examiner reporter seems to have been very put out to have had to queue for almost an hour to get into City Hall. In the foyer, he noted, “chaos and small boys reigned”. Eventually, “some assistance from the gardaí” got him in.

“The hall was packed to capacity and there was much confusion about seating, ticket holders finding themselves forced to stand for the entire tourney.”

The reporter didn’t mention it, but outside, on the pavement, a local character gave a live commentary to those who couldn’t get in, offering an entirely made-up blow-by-blow of the imagined skirmishes within.

Mick O’Brien, past president of the Cork County Boxing Board, and columnist with The Echo, says the man was a northside pigeon-fancier known as Rourkie, a regular fixture outside boxing matches at City Hall.

“Once the results came out of the hall, who was after winning, Rourkie would stand up on a butter box and he’d give this commentary round for round, starring Paddy Martin the Champ, and the crowd would cheer a lot louder outside the door than inside the door and they were only listening to a fictitious fight!

“It was brilliant entertainment, and these fellas loved it, because the following day they could say they were down at City Hall where Martin won the fight, and sure that done it for boasting purposes,” Mr O’Brien says.

“Boxing was huge in the city back then. There was little else on at night, especially in the winter, bar the pictures. 

“You had men coming up from Ford’s, from Dunlop’s, from the docks, you had thousands of people trying to get into City Hall that night, so Rourkie had a captive audience.”

Paddy Martin was born in Clankittane, below Collins Barracks on the Old Youghal Road on Cork’s northside. 

He served in the Irish Army, and later became a bus driver on the No 4 route, going on to be promoted to an inspector. 

He was one of the founders of the National Bus Workers’ Union, and he also established the CIE Widows and Orphans fund.

His son Seán, who succeeded Micheál as a Cork city councillor in 1999, says that fund was a lifesaver for many bereaved families.

“You have to , there was very little in the way of social infrastructure at the time, so the Widows and Orphans fund was an absolute godsend to people, and it kept a lot of families off the breadline,” he says.

Paddy married Lana Corbett from Capwell and they lived on O’Connell Avenue in Turner’s Cross, raising five children, Seán, Máiréad, Eileen, and twins Micheál and Paudie. 

Paddy was a good friend to Jack Lynch, and, according to local Fianna Fáil lore, Jack more than once asked him to stand for the party, but the Champ declined.

“He loved politics, and he was great with Jack, but I think he preferred the more behind the scenes stuff,” Seán Martin says.

A gifted amateur boxer, Paddy represented Ireland 13 times, and he was something of a regular attraction at the City Hall boxing tournaments, but for any number of reasons, Micheál Martin said, that Friday night in January 1951 became the stuff of local legend.

“The father had other big fights, he fought European champions, but that one entered the folklore of boxing in Cork as a defining fight.”

Inside the packed City Hall that night, a small boy watched as his uncle Paddy fought the battle that would cement his reputation as ‘the Champ’. 

John Sheehan would grow up to make a significant contribution to sports in Cork himself, both as a coach with Leevale and as a prominent national presence with Athletics Ireland.

“Paddy lived with us in Spangle Hill at that time, he lived with us up to the day he got married,” Mr Sheehan says. 

“He was like a father to us. I Paddy would do training at home, going for runs, eating the raw eggs. 

“He was a great man for the fresh air! I had the job of cleaning his medals every week, and he used to pay me sixpence.

“I have only vague memories of that night, it’s a very long time ago, it’s hard to that far back. 

“I have a few memories of Paddy boxing. My father was on the corner, instructing Paddy with another guy, there used to be two of them there from the Glen Boxing Club. 

“I was beside the ring, I was a spectator, my father used to always get someone to mind me,” he says.

“I all right, I always , it was a very big night.”

The Cork Examiner reported of the fight: “There was excitement in every round of the cruiserweight contest between P. Martin (Glen) and the broad-shouldered coloured Birkenhead man J. Bygrave [sic]”.

Nine years Paddy Martin’s junior, Joe Bygraves was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1931, into a family of 11 children, and he immigrated to Britain at the age of 15, settling in Liverpool. 

He started his amateur career at 17, first as a light heavyweight before moving up to heavyweight.

According to the Cork Examiner, that night in City Hall Bygraves opened the first round with a ferocious onslaught which nearly took Paddy Martin by surprise. 

“The Corkman fought back, and for the remainder of this round and the five that followed there was little between them.

“[Bygraves] was the sturdier man, but he had trouble from Martin’s long left. 

“The in-fighting was terribly hard, both men landing solidly. Martin got the decision on points, but it must have been a close thing for him.”

Micheál Martin says of the photograph of his father taken after the fight, with Paddy’s young nephew John Sheehan at his side: “You can see that he clearly had had a tough time of it”. 

In truth, the poor bus driver looks like he’s been hit by a bus. John Sheehan said the singlet Paddy wears in the photo, with the word ‘Glen’ stitched on it, was made by John’s mother, Paddy’s sister, Maura.

Two years after that fight in Cork, Joe Bygraves went professional, becoming Commonwealth Heavyweight Champion in 1956. 

A year later again, he successfully defended the title against up-and-coming boxer Henry Cooper, scoring a technical knock-out against Cooper in the ninth round. Cooper would go on to knock down Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali.

Those few degrees of boxing separation from ‘The Greatest’ would serve to burnish the reputation of Paddy Martin the Champ in his home town.

“Of course, boxing people love telling stories about the fella they beat, and how did that person do later on in their boxing careers,” Micheál Martin says.

When Bygraves fought Ingemar Johansson, the Swedish champion, it was ed on Leeside that the Champ had once beaten the Jamaican who was now blazing such a trail at the highest levels of professional boxing.

That fight against Bygraves was part of the foundation of Paddy Martin’s sporting reputation, and the building where it happened retains a special importance for the incoming Taoiseach.

“To me, that’s why City Hall is my favourite building in Cork,” he says. “Then latterly I became lord mayor, sat on the city council for a long number of years, I just love the building.”

Mr Martin says he often thinks about his father’s fighting career, and that connection his family has with City Hall.

“Every now and again, I try to visualise him fighting, what was it like, where was the ring?”

The fight against Bygraves happened almost a decade before Micheál Martin was born, but he once attended a fight in City Hall with his father, when Irish international Mick Dowling was boxing. 

“You’d get the sense of the crowds herding around the ring, it’s a fairly raw sort of experience when you have two boxers in there.”

As he speaks, his voice falters, and he takes a moment to regain his composure.

“I get a bit emotional when I talk about it,” he says.

“The only other point I would say, and it sounds corny or whatever, but it’s true, when I do debates in politics, election debates, two or three minutes before the debate starts, I’ll go into a corner and I try to visualise, I invoke his spirit, and say, ‘He had to go into the ring, he was on his own, once you go into the ring you’re on your own, there’s a whole lot of people watching, depending on you’.

“I get something from that. People have different ways of motivating themselves.

“You’re nervous, you’re anxious before debates. My father always said to me, ‘If you’re not nervous or anxious before a big event, you’ll do badly’.

“And he always said that was how boxers got caught in the past, if you go in too cocky and confident, you’ll get the knock-out, you’ll get the sucker punch.

“But if you’re in nervous, anxious, your defences are up straight away. So I deploy that, I’ve always been conscious of that, never be cocky in any situation.

“I say, ‘Paddy, you had to get into the ring, I’m now going in, there’s nothing to fear,’ give it a go.

“It’s very personal, but that’s it,” he says, simply.

Today, Micheál Martin is due to be appointed taoiseach for the second time.

In the last 20 years of his life, Paddy Martin saw two of his sons, Micheál and Seán, become lord mayor of Cork, and in 2011 he saw Micheál follow in the footsteps of Paddy’s old friend Jack Lynch to lead Fianna Fáil.

Paddy Martin ed away in Cork on January 22, 2012. He was 89.

Joe Bygraves had died six days before him, on January 16, 2012, at the age of 80.