'I Love Me County' - Déise sports history
Cian at the launch for his first book 'Waterford City: A History' in 2019. Photo credit Waterford in Your Pocket.
Waterford historian Cian Manning knows more about his county than most, and has dedicated much of his life to documenting the the history of the Déise.
In 2019 he released his first book 'Waterford City - A History', a brilliant journey into history, released under The History Press.
Now he's getting ready to release ''I Love Me County' - Waterford Sporting Stories', which pieces together forgotten stories from Waterford's sporting world.
Cian researched and put together 60 tales of of this sporting history, and spoke to the Waterford News and Star about the process.
Cian has been busy this year writing and researching local sporting legends.
He said: "Back in March, I had book on the Junior League centenary, so that was that was cool.
"This [book] is coming out a few months later and is basically like a selection. It's 60 stories related to different sports."
For Cian, it was important to have a wide mix of selected stories, and not rehashes of more famous moments in sport.
He said: "It was to try and have a little bit of variety, not just, not just Waterford winning the All-Ireland in 1948 or 1959 or playing Manchester United in European Cups.
"There's some barbaric sports like bull-baiting in Ballybricken but then archery, polo, subbuteo. Its like fads in fashion, or music, its the same in sport.
"I would see it as a form of expression, so the only way I was going to have some sort of connection with it was, like my research and writing about it, because I was useless in every sport so it was my little way into it."
Cian has discovered stories from all over the county, and has found that every town has their own legend.
He explained : "It's like the Pride of Place [awards], each area has their own sporting hero within Waterford itself. I tried to get in as many towns and villages outside of the city; boxers from Dungarvan, cricketers from Cappoquin."
While researching the book, Cian recognised how sport became more accessible to the masses amid social change: "The wealthy would have pursued sport first, a lot of lords, ladies and landed gentry. You see over the decades goes on you see more working-class people getting involved."
One story Cian touched on involves a Lismore bare-knuckle boxer Ned O'Baldwin, who was known as 'The Irish Giant', who was a star in the 19th century.
Cian said: "He was kind of playing on the PT Barnum freakish stuff. You can see the subtle racism like they said he was a vegetarian because he was surrounded by potatoes."
Ned travelled to England for bare-knuckle boxing, before eventually moving to America to make it big.
Cian said: "He never got the big fight he hoped for. They said he was one of the contenders of the time, but he ended up going into business with a guy owning a saloon in New York, but his business partner shot him dead."
"There's a familiar story in boxing as well with money, the idea of getting your fight and when you're past your prime when were cast out, and that happened to him in the UK and the US."
This is just one of the many fascinating stories in the upcoming book, which comes out later this month.
