*Patrick Horgan
OF ALL THE hurlers that will line out in Sunday’s All-Ireland SHC, Patrick Horgan has been playing senior inter-county hurling longer than them all.
Indeed it was against Clare in the 2008 All-Ireland SHC quarter final when Hoggy made his first start in senior championship for Cork having earned his debut in the league against Dublin in March and his championship bow when defeating Tipperary that June.
He has scored 700 points in the championship but a coveted All-Ireland medal still eludes him. There is a narrative focusing on the Glen Rovers man’s bid to win a Celtic Cross but he said it is something skipping his mind. “I’m not saying it because I’m in the position, but it’s actually not even close to that for me. I’m not aiming 17 years towards a day. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had good times.
“I’ve had good days down through the years and the amount of stories you have from match days going down through the years and training and 17 years of my life has been coming here, hanging out with the boys, new fellas coming in, getting to know them, becoming great friends with them. That means a lot to me. Obviously, it’d be unbelievable if we could get across the line, but it can’t be just about that. In your hurling career, it’s lovely to get it and everybody wants to have it and I’m no different. But I’d look over a long time and did I enjoy it or didn’t enjoy it and I did”.
How Sunday pans out won’t impact whether his involvement for next year, Patrick said. “If I were to say it would have an impact, I would just lied in the last question. Obviously, if I see myself falling off like a performance or speed-wise, and you can see that easily. And if I feel like I don’t have the hunger to train and put in the amount of effort that the players we have put in, then I wouldn’t. It’s a very simple thing to say, I’m not going to do it because if you don’t have it, you don’t have it”.
He continued, “Training on Wednesday night is what it’s about for me. I love coming down early, being ready, throwing on the gear, going out and just do whatever you want on the pitch. Boys come along, have a few chats or whatever. That’s what sport is. It’s great to be involved in these big games and sell outs there last week but it’s about the people you meet and the days you have with them”.
Staying involved in the inter-county game has been a delight, Hoggy outlined. “Like you could be flying and then you could pick up a knock. You could be out for three or four months. You might miss the championship then because it came at the wrong time. Then next year, it’s all the fight for places again. Some other fella comes in and he’s flying and you’re in a competition for a place you might not get. Then that’s two years gone. So you have to be lucky along the way as well and I have been really lucky, I have to say that”.
His enjoyment for the game has not waned during this time, “If I didn’t love it as much as I did, I wouldn’t play at all. There’d be no reason to. Even to win the Limerick game, for me, wasn’t the reward of the match at all. It was like, we get a training session Tuesday, back with the boys. We’d all be done together because we get on really well, obviously”.
Explaining why he thinks this enjoyment has sustained, he said, “I think it could be I just have this thing where I just have to try to get better all the time. It’s weird. I think if you lose that, you’ll just freefall Well, obviously, if you’re gone. But I feel like I’d be annoyed if I couldn’t do something or try to do something. When we train, we’d see a lot of players doing a certain move or strike or whatever, and then every fella is over trying to do it and you’ll be freaking out if you can’t do it. I think it’s just the hunger to be better is just really strong”.
Cork’s forwards have been “flying”, he said. “I suppose all our forwards have been flying. All our team have been. They just bring a lot of energy. Shane (Barrett), especially, he just doesn’t get tired. It looks like it anyway. But he just keeps going the whole match and it creates a lot of openings for other fellows as well by doing that. Then you have the two boys in the wing who are just always have to be minded as well. We’ve a good thing going inside as well with the other two lads as well. It’s just been unbelievable to play in the team, really, at the moment”.
Losing to Clare in the 2013 final following a replay was “disappointing at the time,” he recalled. “We probably should have got out of line, didn’t, whatever. Probably stung for a while after, yeah. But after that, it was a case of get back to what you loved doing. You can think of that and it’ll affect your going forward or else just try to forget about it and improve”.
On his memories of Domhnall O’Donovan’s equalising score to force a replay, he commented eleven years on, “do you know what I can remember is it must have been just a thing that it was supposed to happen because if you look at the I just remember a sequence of play where five or six things happened, and if one thing happened differently, the game was over, and it just kept seem to break for them, break for them. A handpass going to ground, then pick. A couple of things happened like that. And then the strike, and I think one of our or fellas went for a hook and just missed that and it went all over the black spot then”.
Horgan believes he will know himself when the time is right to exit stage left on the inter-county hurling scene. “I’ll see myself like what I go on when I said, if I feel like I can’t contribute to training, contribute to the team, well then there’s plenty young fellows there that can. We see every night in training. That’s the level we’re at here, where there’s going to be fellas not make the panel next week. They’ll feel like they should have, and they should have because they’ve done so much effort. But that’s the panel we have, and that’s how I see it”.
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