Hogan ready for the final hurdle
“There’s nothing like being on the field when you’ve won, celebrating with the lads. I was sitting on a trolley and to see the lads leppin’ around is a bit frustrating.
“You still think, ‘Jesus, I might meet up with them later on’, but that wasn’t going to happen. That realisation set in quickly, I wasn’t going anywhere.
“It was frustrating, and the fact that it was a final and you want to be a part of it. It was disappointing, but them’s the breaks, I suppose. Literally.”
This weekend’s All-Ireland final between Kilkenny and Tipperary is being billed as a rerun of that league final. Hogan accepts it as a measurement of the two teams.
“Tipp ran us to the wire in the league and people would be hoping for something similar in the (All-Ireland) final, which I’m sure they’ll get.
“People see Tipp as the team who are going to knock us off our pedestal so there’s probably added excitement from the neutral’s point of view, and even from the Kilkenny point of view.
“You know it’s going to be a serious match and I suppose from a Kilkenny point of view it would make people that bit more apprehensive because it was such a tight margin to win the league final by.”
There’s a similarity to last year’s final in that Kilkenny are again playing neighbours – to the east, as opposed to the south, however.
“When it’s a neighbouring county, there’s always a bit more excitement around about it, talking to guys living on the border and some of them have relations in Tipp.
“It’s similar to the Waterford situation last year, a lot of the guys from the south would work in Waterford. It’s much closer to home and so that brings excitement to it.”
It’s been stop-start for Hogan this year, after a smooth couple of seasons. He accepts that.
“This year I had the bang against Limerick at the start of the league and I suppose that was a sign of things to come.
“The Tipp match was frustrating because it was just eight minutes into it and I wasn’t involved too much in it. I saw a bit of extra-time in hospital and that was it.
“Then you’re missing out on the time of year that you want to be hurling, you want to be going out in sunny weather and training with the lads and going out on the big days against Galway in Tullamore.
“Those kind of times you’re sitting on the sideline frustrated but all you can do is keep your head and know that you’ll be back at some stage.”
Hogan doesn’t feel he owns his place, however: “It’s not my position, you know? Cody always says you don’t own the position, you wear the jersey and you hold it for someone.
“And it’s a fact. Tenno (John Tennyson) held the jersey and it was up to me if I wanted it to fight to try to get it back. Brian always says, ‘listen, the team is picked on the training, nowhere else – if you are performing in training consistently then you’re putting yourself in contention’.
“I knew that. I had benefited from it for the last couple of years and guys have lost out from it.
He stands by his word and I knew if I could get back my level of fitness and get my hurling up to scratch in training, I’d give myself the opportunity to get back in for the Waterford match and luckily that’s what happened, I got back in for it.”
Being ready for Sunday means being ready for an in-form Tipp forward line. “You always like to match yourself up against the best guys to see how you fare,” says Hogan.
“To be honest, they’re awesome, they have serious pace in the forwards. They’re all natural hurlers and all well able to take their scores so we’re under no illusions we’re going to have a serious day at the office to try to curtail these guys.
“But I suppose it’s nice when you know you’ve been marking Henry, Marty, Richie Power and these guys, you’re not going to come up against guys too much better than these guys. I’m looking forward to it.
“You always want to play against the best guys and this year so far Tipp have looked very good.”
He accepts that Tipperary look the team likely to challenge the Cats in the near future.
“I’m only thinking of this game, you don’t know what’s going to happen over the next year or whatever.
“But over the course of the year they have progressed, with every game they have shown improvement and I suppose they’ve timed it really well in terms of saving their best performance up until now until the semi-final.
“They put in 70 minutes, which is something that was thrown back at them for the last couple of games.
“They’ve proved they can do it for 70 minutes now and even through the Munster championship you could see they are a settled team now, comfortable hurling with each other.
“There’s a fluency to the way they’re playing as well so they’re serious opposition,” he adds.
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