Bourke has chance to fulfil Lar’s prediction

It was June 2006, the build-up to the Munster senior hurling final in Semple Stadium between Cork and Tipperary, Lar Corbett was talking about a young neighbour of his.

“Pa Bourke — he’s only living across the road from me. He’s out every morning pucking a ball off the wall. He’s even out there this week, seven o’clock some mornings, I’d hear the thud, thud, and he’s doing the Leaving! I’d say there isn’t a book opened. He gets a Stanley knife to those new O’Neills sliotars, cuts off the cover, there’s a rubber insert, and that’s what he uses, flies back off the wall it does. I think he’s going to be the next big thing, in hurling.”

That year Pa was the main man up front for Tipperary as they won their first All-Ireland minor title in 10 years. A season later he made his senior championship debut, introduced by then-manager Babs Keating against Limerick in what turned out to be a three-game marathon. It should have signalled the start of a sterling career for Pa; in hindsight it probably set him back years.