Long way round for Hogan

EARLY in 1991, Ken Hogan came home from training one evening to find visitors from Offaly who wanted him to coach their team.

Brian Whelehan, Declan Pilkington and Gary Cahill of Birr, in fact. Some visitors. Some team.

“They had a mid-term crisis and I ended up training them. We won the county — their first since 1971 — and went on to play Kiltormer in the All-Ireland club final.”

Adrian Cahill broke his leg before the game, and Kiltormer, brought on by three games against Cashel of Tipperary, won by a couple of points. Hogan was still playing senior hurling for Tipperary at the time, so it wasn’t ideal, and 20 years on, he hasn’t exactly been on the club circuit.

“I’m not really into training clubs — I’ve been hugely involved in my own club [Lorrha] and my family play there, but the only two teams I’ve trained are Birr and Coolderry, apart from the county team.

“My babysitter was from Coolderry, though. The Bradys’ mother. They’d obliged us so that was how I approached it, back in 2009.”

They got what Hogan calls “an awful cleaning” from Kilcormack-Killoughey in his first year. In 2010 they went at it again and got “a lesson in hurling” from Birr in the league semi-final.

“At that stage we had five U21s coming into the panel, though, and that gave the thing a fresh impetus.”

They rallied to win the county championship but were out two weeks later in the Leinster Club championship, in Mullingar, to face Ratharney of Westmeath.

“We were beaten fair and square. 0-17 to 0-14, they didn’t get soft goals or anything and I wouldn’t like to have to go there today and play them again. They were very good.”

Hogan remembers going back to Nolan’s in Birr for a drink afterwards and hearing the smart comments: “People saying ‘typical Coolderry, they won in Offaly but couldn’t carry it on in Leinster’. We were determined to come back in 2011 to win two county titles in a row — for the first time in over 50 years for the club — and to prove them wrong.”

They overcame an early defeat in the group by Birr which “grounded” them, as Hogan says. In the quarter-final they ground out a three-point win over Clareen; in the semi-final, they avenged the 2009 loss to Kilcormack-Killoughey; and in the final they held out against a determined Birr comeback.

In Leinster championship they beat Ballyboden St Enda’s and Oulart-the-Ballagh: a Leinster title in the bag.

“It was something the Coolderry players would have dreamed of,” says Hogan now, “playing in and winning a Leinster club final. It finished the season very well. But now it’s another year, another challenge.”

Gort are the challenge. Hogan is familiar with the club scene in there now, after a lot of challenge games in the west, so are his players.

“Without talking up Gort, we played a lot of Galway and Tipp opposition — Toomevara, Thurles Sars — and we got our arses kicked by Portumna one evening. Skinned alive.

“We played Mullagh in Galway and got beaten as well. When you go there and you see how good they are, you know the standard of Galway hurling, and their record at that level — and it was good for our lads to see that for themselves, the bar we had to reach.”

Hogan acknowledges all the semi-finalists will see this as a huge opportunity, even the supposed outsiders.

“I met Damien Martin recently and we were saying it was laughable, Loughgiel being outsiders — they’re the only ones who’ve won the All-Ireland.

“Damien goes back to 1985 when his St Rynagh’s team played Loughgiel and drew, and everyone was saying ‘ye’ll get them the next day’. But they didn’t.”