The tyro and the thoroughbred

BACK IN 2001, two-time player-of-the-year Brian Corcoran shook the hurling world with the announcement of his retirement from all levels of the game. None were more shaken than those in his home county.

Still only 28, Corcoran was the dominant figure in a youthful Cork side, the centre-back colossus who led the team by example. True, there had been a blip on the Corcoran graph in the previous year’s All-Ireland semi-final loss to Offaly, and there were murmurings, even among the faithful; it was still a shock, however, when he failed to hold his place for the first-round Munster championship game against Limerick in 2001, coming on in that game as a sub at wing-back. Not a patch on the quake that hit later in the year, that announcement. No-one had seen it coming.

Ironically, that same season, and before the proclamation, Cork hurling followers were already talking about ‘the new’ Brian Corcoran. It’s a dreaded mantle of course, lead-weighted and usually misplaced; the ‘new’ Christy Ring, ‘new’ DJ Carey, new anybody.