TJ RYAN is one of the unsung heroes of Skibbereen Rowing Club. You name a job, he has probably done it. Rower. Coach. Umpire. Committee member. Vice captain. Secretary. He even drives across Europe with boat trailers ahead of international regattas.
The man from Townshend Street in Skibb began his story with the club in the mid-1980s, first as a rower, and it was in ’87 that one of the club’s legendary figures, the late Denis McCarthy, persuaded TJ to become an umpire.
Fast forward 37 years to the recent Rowing Ireland Awards where TJ was named Umpire of the Year – it’s a fitting accolade for one of the best in the business.
‘We only had one umpire in the club at the time, Denis himself, and he asked me to get involved in that side of it,’ TJ recalls. And it’s a role he has enjoyed from the start, as his rowing story eventually moved off the water and onto land.
‘Back in those days it was just fours and eights, and I hopped into those boats. After a few years, people moved on and crews fell apart so I ended up sculling for five or six years. After that I went into administration, coaching and umpiring.’
As an umpire, TJ rose to prominence quite quickly – it’s a role he enjoys.
‘An umpire’s role is effectively like being a referee,’ he explains.
‘It’s dealing with fairness, and you’re starting races, you’re doing the finish, looking after the lining to make sure they are straight at the start – there are about five or six different roles involved.
‘You are there for three reasons: for safety, for fairness and to make sure everyone is obeying the rules.
‘I got my first umpire licence 37 years ago, and at one stage I looked at getting the international one but I decided against it. I have four years as chair of the umpire committee in Ireland, as well. I’m still on it.’
TJ even presents the umpire exams, and amongst the students that he passed is a certain Dominic Casey. No surprise, coach Casey graduated with flying colours.
His role – and longevity – also means TJ has had a front row seat to watch Skibbereen Rowing Club’s athletes develop from newbies to, as is often the case in Skibb, world-class rowers. One of TJ’s claims to fame is he saw Paul O’Donovan’s first-ever race; it was in Fermoy, he thinks.
‘I saw Paul in his very first race, and saw him develop up along. I've seen so many kids progress from starting out up to to internationals,’ he says, and that also means TJ has watched rowing evolve too.
‘There has been massive changes in the sport from when I started to now,’ he says.
‘When we started we were lucky if there were 1000 people in the country rowing, but look at the numbers now.
‘Back then, there were no lane courses and a lot more smaller regattas, and they were great fun. It was all eights and fours too, there were no quad sculls back then. It’s been a constant change and you have to adapt to it. Irish racing rules follow the international rules so we are using the same book effectively.’
As an example, TJ says, he would be called on at a regatta if somebody clashed with another boat or went off course. He will lean on almost 40 years of experience to find the right solution.
There’s a satisfaction, too, to arriving at the right outcome.
He admits there are fewer ‘journey-men umpires’ these days compared to before, umpires that would travel around to different regattas whereas now there are many umpires who look after their own regatta only.
TJ adapts to situations like this – for last year’s Skibbereen regatta, he qualified 12 umpires in the club to create a team to look after the event.
‘We initiated a change to our regatta where we did static umpiring that was never really done before in Ireland, so we trained a team. The easiest way is to have your own team that you can tell them exactly what you want to do, whereas if you have others from different clubs you don't get the tightness that’s required. That worked really well for us last April,’ TJ says, and he refers to the network of umpires he now has in every rowing club in the country as ‘a family’.
And that very same family will have celebrated TJ being crowned Rowing Ireland’s Umpire of the Year.
