WHEN he talks about coaching his two daughters at his beloved St Oliver Plunkett Football Club, Jody Lynch loses himself in happy thoughts.
Leaning back in the leather seat in a quiet spot of the Balmoral Hotel, he says: “Rionach’s confidence has come on so, so much. She’s not as outgoing as Fiadh - she’s a wee bit shy. She plays midfield and is brilliant at driving into space. She gets her head up and is fantastic at finding a pass.
“Fiadh would run through a brick wall. She’s a solid defender who gives everything. She won’t let anything beat her. She’s so competitive, loves the game, loves sport, loves sitting watching Man United with me. She’s a winner.
“Since Rionach and Fiadh started playing sport I’ve seen a big, big difference in them. They’re more confident and you can see them interact more with other girls.”
It’s Friday afternoon and Lynch has finished school for the day. He works as a classroom assistant at St Gerard’s Special Education School on Black’s Road, a stone’s throw away from where we’re sitting.
“The kids in St Gerard’s are the most loveable kids you’ll ever come across. You’re helping them through their day. Something that you do with them could make their day. I get so much joy out of the things they do…”
His voice tails off, authentic emotions when he speaks about the special kids of St Gerard’s.
Throughout this two-hour interview he praises the teachers in the school – “They greet you with a smile every day” – and credits Stevie O’Neill, his close friend, teaching colleague and former Cliftonville team-mate, for helping him put the pieces back together again.
Jody Lynch is four-and-a-half years clean of alcohol.
He’s been stitched into the fabric of St Oliver Plunkett since he was knee-high. Now 35, he’s able to give a bit back.
“I love coaching. I love seeing development in the kids. I love seeing them smile. I love whenever they’re in the club and they’re not running the streets; they’re not sitting on their iPads.
“It gives me a wee bit of happiness – the kids trusting you and looking up to you. It gives you that feeling of, ‘I’m doing okay here’.”
Each day he wakes, he’s thankful for his five children – his warrior footballers, Rionach and Fiadh, nine-month-old daughter Ciana, his eldest girl Deirbhile and two-year-old Odhran.
He describes Ciara, his fiancé, as an “amazing mother and amazing woman”.
“We’ve loved each other from no age. We’ve had our fall-outs - but she knew there was a good person in me and that’s why she stood by me.”
With his faith and family, Jody Lynch travels into the light…
HE’S on his knees in the bedroom of his Granny and Granda’s house in Lenadoon - a bucket in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.
In between coughing up blood, he’s trying to drink the wine. Swollen face. Yellowed eyes. Rock bottom in its rawest state.
It was in the early throes of the COVID pandemic when Jody Lynch peered beyond death’s door.
“I asked my Granda to ring for an ambulance.”
Lynch has vague recollections of the back of the ambulance. Flying along the road. Medics masked up. Tubes everywhere. Still coughing up blood and his stomach contorting. Organ failure happening right in front of the medics’ eyes.
His kidneys and liver were giving up the ghost.
“They said if I had left it one more day, I would have been dead,” Lynch says matter-of-factly.
“I drank myself into oblivion. I can’t remember three months of my life.”
The doctors said his youth and fitness through playing sport saved his life.
LYNCH had a wand of a left foot. His football IQ was off the scale. Short and long passes, he could put a ball on a sixpence. You couldn’t dislodge the ball from ‘Plunkett’s midfield schemer. There was always a touch of class in everything he did on a football pitch.
Having come through the youth ranks at the famous west Belfast club, ‘Plunkett coaches Marty McLaughlin and Noel Monaghan knew Lynch, then in his late teens, was too good not be playing football at the highest level.
So, they got in touch with Tommy Breslin at Cliftonville. Lynch agreed to give it a go and turned up at the nearby Whiterock Leisure Centre for his first training session with the Irish League club.
He spent a couple of seasons with the club’s reserves where his football education continued under the watchful eye of Michael Press.
He made his first team debut alongside Ruaridhri Donnelly in a CIS Cup game against Larne at Inver Park.
“I was playing left wing and it was nil-each after 70-odd minutes,” Lynch recalls. “I got the ball on the left, whipped it across and Ruaridhri scored.”
A week or so later, Lynch scored with his first touch on his league debut against Lisburn Distillery and earned himself a three-year contract at £50 per week.
He had the world at his feet and was following in the footsteps of well-known ‘Plunkett men – Jim Magilton, Anton Rogan, Paul McVeigh and his uncle Philip Mulryne.
But it was in the early throes of his budding Cliftonville career when alcohol started gripping his senses.
“When I started drinking, I couldn’t stop. Once I lifted the first one, that was it – game over.”
Senior players Ronan and Chris Scannell would take it in turns to drop Lynch home after training on a Tuesday or a Thursday night.
“They would drop me at the corner of Falcarragh Drive, I would’ve pretended to walk into Lenadoon and then turn and walk over to the Suffolk Inn – Thursday night, Tuesday night, didn’t matter what night it was.
“That would have been me – getting drunk. A lot of pints, then back to a mate’s house until the next morning. Friday nights out drinking, the day before a match, trying to act fresh the next day.
“I would have got to sleep at about eight in the morning and been up at about 11 to go and play.
“It was like a rock and roll lifestyle - but I knew in my head I was drinking too much. Whenever I was going out, I knew I was going out...”
Lynch adds: “I was performing well in training because I wasn’t drinking that day but when it came to a Saturday, people thought I wasn’t confident on the ball, I wasn’t myself.
“They were probably thinking, he’s able to do it in training but can’t do it in a match but it was because I was drinking on the Friday night and not sleeping.
“My youth allowed me to get away with. It was only in the second season I started to struggle.”
Weirdly, one of the best games he recalls ever playing for Cliftonville was a Monday night match in the Setanta Cup, away to Dundalk in 2011.
He’d been drinking from Saturday straight through to Monday morning. The team bus was picking the players up at 1.30pm to make the hour’s journey to Dundalk.
Lynch hadn’t eaten a bite since Saturday morning and was trying to “look fresh” as Tommy Breslin named the team on the bus.
He named Lynch in central midfield beside George McMullan.
“I was absolutely dying,” he says. “I was throwing up in the toilet on the bus the whole way down.”
Lynch tripped off the team bus and proceeded to play the shirt off his back at Oriel Park, even though the Reds ultimately bowed out of the all-island tournament that night.
The extent of his drinking, though, began to manifest in his performances and he remembers George McMullan telling him and his Reds team-mate Aaron Smyth to “rein it in”.
One of the proudest moments of his playing career was being part of Cliftonville’s title-winning team in 2013.
Lynch was on the Reds bench on the day McMullan struck home the spot-kick against Linfield at Solitude to win the Gibson Cup.
He later joined Carrick Rangers and was part of their treble-winning team that claimed the Championship, the Steel & Sons Cup and the Intermediate Cup in the 2014/15 season.
He should have been a starter for Carrick every day of the week but found himself on the bench far too often – another clear sign that his alcohol addiction was not only wrecking his playing career but his personal relationships.
If he came home drunk, Ciara would send him down to his Granny and Granda’s house in the next street.
“At the time I thought she was the worst person in the world, but she was doing me a big, big favour because my kids never saw that side of me.”
He adds: “Weaning myself off the drink was hell - the shakes, crying into my pillow. My life was turmoil. My relationship was wrecked, not seeing my daughter. Just running about making an eejit out of myself. I’d no way out and I felt this was going to be me for the rest of my life.”
IN his childhood, Jody Lynch worshipped the ground Jackie Maxwell walked.
Maxwell had suffered terrible tragedy in his own life, losing his two sons – Gerard and Sean, aged 10 and 13 – in a car accident on the cusp of Christmas in 1970 while they headed up the Glen Road to do their paper round.
Maxwell later immersed himself in St Oliver Plunkett Youth Football Club. To this day, the club thrives because of Jackie Maxwell’s rich legacy.
It’s been said before about Jackie’s living room being the club’s headquarters, his garage the changing rooms and his Volvo Estate Car the team mini-bus.
More than a coach, Jackie Maxwell was a compassionate soul.
He knew young Lynch was getting it tough. Jody’s father was a long-distance lorry-driver working in England mostly, while his mother suffered a mental breakdown when he was just 10-years-old, the impact of which was unfathomable.
Acting the class clown and trying to be the tough guy were Jody’s coping mechanisms.
The football pitch was always his happy place. Every morning around 6am, he would knock Harry Murray’s door for the key to the nearby five-a-side pitch and he’d play there until it was time to go to school.
“My mother took ill when I was 10. My father was working in England a lot, so I would have stayed in my Granny and Granda’s house.
“At the time I didn’t understand but my behaviour started to change. I always felt lonely. All my mates were able to go home to their mummies and daddies.
“There was always something in me that felt I was an outsider. Wee simple things used to hurt me. People had family days out, whereas I was constantly out playing football.
“Jackie was an absolute hero. I adored him. He took me under his wing when times got really tough for me.”
His fondest childhood memories revolved around playing for ‘Plunkett.
Getting the boat over to Blackpool for an annual tournament, running between the chalets and looking up at the awesome rollercoasters in the Pleasure Beach.
“It was class. Freedom. They were the best memories. Jackie would have made sure I was a part of it when I maybe wasn’t able to afford it because of the situation.
“And I know it would have come out of Jackie’s own pocket. He always had wee one-to-one conversations with me, just simple things about life.
“He was like my Granda to me growing up. He was a real strong man, the biggest character, the biggest hero in Lenadoon.
“He built an empire. Where we are as a club now all came from Jackie Maxwell. He was the foundation, and you had good men behind him - Eamonn McGonagle, Eoghan McGonagle, Marty McLaughlin, Noel Monaghan, Liam Burns, Danny McKee, Seanie Moreland – all these ‘Plunkett men who grew up as kids are now running the club.”
His proudest moment in football will forever be walking out at Windsor Park with his children and representing the ‘Plunkett badge in the 2023 Intermediate Cup final, wishing he could see Jackie “in his big coat in the stand”, but still giving his all for Eoghan McGonagle, his manager and Jackie’s proud grandson.
IN 2018, he checked himself into Cuan Mhuire in Newry for three months – a well-known addiction treatment centre.
Frightened, not knowing what to expect, he found peace of mind there. His favourite part of the day was wandering out to the small garden, saying the rosary and looking up at the fields.
“There were all walks of life in Cuan Mhuire: solicitors, doctors, pilots, every occupation - no-one judges you. I went in and just opened up...”
He was as frightened leaving Cuan Mhuire as he was arriving there.
“Once I got out, I tried to build my relationship [with Ciara] back up. She brought my kids down to see me when I was in there. Apart from my eldest, they were very young at the time. I never drank around my kids.”
Dry for six months, Lynch relapsed.
He thought he was strong enough to still be able to socialise with his drinking buddies but realised the hard way he couldn’t.
One Sunday, he took himself down to the Sarsfields club for a pint – thinking that he could leave it at that.
“I went out on another bender, went missing.”
He drank roughly for another year until he found himself in the small bedroom in his grandparents’ house - with a bucket in one hand and wine in the other.
The flashing blue lights came. Stomach contorting. Medics masked up. Tubes everywhere. Staring at death’s door.
That was April 23, 2020. Jody Lynch has been clean ever since.
He’s in thoughtful, contemplative mood on this Friday afternoon. Occasionally, he glances up at the clock behind the bar as he must pick his son up from nursery soon.
Life continues to throw him ferocious challenges. Over the last 18 months, he’s lost his younger brother, his father and grandfather – three hugely influential people in his life.
But he refuses to bow to the “devil’s drink”.
“Some days I don’t know who I’m grieving for,” he says. “I just look at my own kids and they get me through every day. I do hurt. I do feel sad. I do grieve. But I try my best to erase as many negative thoughts as quickly as I can.
“Since I’ve stopped drinking, I’ve found out who I really am. I’ve found out that I’m a good father, I’m a good partner, I coach kids, I give back to the community, I help others, I help the kids in school. I’m proud of who I’ve become and the person I was meant to be.”
Of his mother, he says: “I love her to bits. I don’t care how sick she’s been, I always knew she loved me. She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met.”
In the absence of his late father, he was able to give his sister away on her wedding day in Santorini.
He stood up and made his speech and drank coffee the rest of the day.
Earlier in the year, he went on a family holiday to Turkey with Ciara and the kids. He drank Pepsi and had the best holiday he’s ever had.
With his faith and family, Jody Lynch travels continuously into the light…
