Seán Óg: a true Rebel role model

TWO days after Cork won the 2005 All-Ireland title, the team brought Liam McCarthy up to the Na Piarsaigh clubhouse in Farranree on Cork's northside.

While an ecstatic crowd waited in the club car park, the panellists lined up in the main hall, ready to take their places on the stage outside.

Amid the joking and jostling, one of the senior players pointed to the figure at the head of the line.

"It's all for him," he said. "I'd follow that man anywhere."

He was pointing at Sean Óg Ó hAilpín, Cork senior hurling captain and my sportsperson of the year.

By his own admission, the Cork wing-back didn't have one of his stand-out seasons in the red jersey. Last year he was regal from the first throw-in and the undisputed hurler of the year, but this summer there were hiccups. Eoin Kelly of Waterford gave him a tough time in the first game of the championship, and he was one of several players who had to improve significantly in order for Cork to survive their semi-final with Clare. Eventually he played himself into form, but after the All-Ireland decider itself he told Jim O'Sullivan of this newspaper that captaining Cork had "detracted" from his own performance.

Little wonder. Ó hAilpín's first commitment as captain of Cork was to participate in the pageantry to mark the opening of the City of Culture programme, when he had to slay some class of giant invading dragon with a blazing sliothar; significantly enough, it was one of the few City of Culture events to stick in the mind. Presumably the experience was a welcome change for Ó hAilpín from the traditional early-season purgatory of the league. Then again, for a man used to marking Henry Shefflin, maybe not.

Soon afterwards the responsibilities became far more onerous. Robert Holohan went missing in Midleton last January and Ó hAilpín, the youngster's hero, became involved in the search, eventually reading a prayer of the faithful at the boy's funeral mass. It was an unexpectedly harrowing consequence of wearing the captain's armband.

Resuming on-field activities must have come as a relief, but even then Ó hAilpín's celebrity impinged. In this year's Season of Sundays, the annual pictorial record of the GAA season, one of the most telling images is on page 39: it shows Ó hAilpín in his playing gear, surrounded by autograph-seekers, and the caption states simply that the picture was taken half an hour after the Cork-Tipperary league game finished. Many of the fans are in Tipperary tops - Johnny Leahy of Boherlahan, thou shouldst be living at this hour! - and the expression of the youngster looking straight up at the Corkman is worth the price of the book alone.

Come the championship, Ó hAilpín had occasion to pick up two trophies, and on both occasions he made his victory speech completely in Irish. Both provoked some predictably mindless reaction, but there was nothing exclusive or willful about his decision. Ó hAilpín was educated through Irish and speaks the language fluently, and it could hardly have been surprising that he would select the first official language to express himself. The 2004 Kerry captain, Dara Ó Cinnéide, himself a native speaker, paid the Corkman a generous tribute when he pointed out that Ó hAilpín had come to the language late, and that his Irish was all the more praiseworthy as a result.

When Cork came south the day after beating Galway in Croke Park, they received the usual rapturous welcome afforded to All-Ireland champions. On the platform at the end of the South Mall, there were the usual brief introductions and pleasantries before the team captain was introduced.

It was noticeable that that announcement cued the crowd into a sudden flurry of activity - lifting children onto shoulders, whipping out cameras, holding up mobiles. Nobody wanted that moment to pass unmarked: the very instant, when Sean Óg Ó hAilpín stood out at the microphone and shook the All-Ireland trophy at his own people, needed recording, either on film or in memory.

At the time we said it indicated his standing on Leeside, and Thor was the parallel we used. Now we think maybe Odin would be a better fit.

Then, after all that, a season that would send another man to his bed for the winter, Ó hAilpín jetted off to star for Ireland against Australia in the Compromise Rules Series, the only man in the squad not to play senior intercounty football in the last 12 months. Talk about giving fuel to hurling snobs...

A week before the All-Ireland final, Ó hAilpín said he was conscious of the honour of captaining the Cork hurlers - and conscious of the legacy of the men before him, men like Jack Lynch and Christy Ring, Charlie McCarthy and Jimmy Barry-Murphy. He said it was a privilege for him to captain the Cork hurling team.

He was wrong. The privilege was ours to see him do it.