Tadhgie Lyne grew up on High Street, Killarney, only half a mile from the famous Kerry ground of Fitzgerald Stadium.
His football talent apparent from an early age, and he spent hours daily practicing the skills of the game with a ball suspended from the rafters of his father's house.
Nevertheless, despite being called for trials for the Kerry All-Ireland Minor Football Championship for two years in succession he could not make the panel, with contemporaries such as Jerome O'Shea and Seán Murphy outshining him.
[citation needed] Lyne's county career only began after his club, the Dick Fitzgeralds, won the 1951 Kerry Senior Football Championship.
In 1955, Lyne might have been lost to football, but he turned down the offer of a professional soccer contract with Glasgow Celtic to play with Kerry.