Pa Cronin’s big bang theory

Even in hurling, multi-skilled sport and all that it is, every team still needs a bruiser or two, a big banger who can take and give the knocks in the rough-and-tumble of the all-important possession battles around the half-forward and half-back war zones.

As they get ready for Sunday’s All-Ireland SHC semi-final against Dublin, Cork are now very well served up front in that department, newcomer Seamus Harnedy on one wing, team captain Pa Cronin on the other.

For a while this year in the lead-up to Cork’s first Munster championship game, against Clare, one of those was missing-in-action. Ironically, it was one such big bang that saw Pa Cronin end up in hospital for nearly two weeks; even more ironically, that bang might well have saved the big Bishopstown star from more serious damage.

“I had pneumonia for a couple of weeks before the Clare game but it wasn’t known until I got a bang on my chest in a club championship game against Courcey Rovers and I started coughing up a load of blood. I knew something was wrong because I had thousands of those collisions before and nothing would have happened. The doctor came in and started checking was it my tongue or something, but I could feel it deep down in my lungs. You panic when you see things like that so I went straight to CUH and I was there for 10 days.”

Nowadays pneumonia is eminently treatable — if diagnosed. Otherwise, and especially with a hard-training top athlete, it can still be very dangerous. Pa was in that category. “I had it for a few weeks before. When you train very, very hard, your immune system goes low and you’re prone to infection and it developed on from that. Probably a chest infection to begin with and I kept going training and playing away, and it was getting worse and worse. I knew I wasn’t feeling myself — you’d be a bit run down and a bit drained and things, but thank God I’ve put all that behind me. Potentially it was very dangerous but I look back on that club championship game as a blessing in disguise. If I didn’t get that bang into the chest I’d have continued on the season and been run down and drained and playing.”

He wanted to play, certainly, but he also wanted to be right. It wasn’t until the week of the game itself he finally got word.

“I got out of hospital the Monday before the Clare match. I was dealing with Dr Barry Plant who’s very close to Dr Con (Murphy, Cork’s long-serving team medic), so he would have known about sport as well. The two of them work very well together and they said there’d be no way I could start on the Sunday, but 10-15 minutes should be okay.”

He came on for the final 10 minutes to a huge cheer from the Cork support when he pointed a Pa Cronin special, winning a huge puck-out by Anthony Nash, turning and shooting. That’s going to be crucial this Sunday, offering himself as a target-man for the Nash special delivery, likewise Harnedy on the other side and even the smaller but gravity-defying James Coughlan in the centre. Those three will be up against the outstanding Dublin line of Stephen Hiney, Liam Rushe and Michael Carton, the former two very physical.

“You look at Dublin, they’re very physical, very strong, and they can back it up with skill. It’s going to be an unbelievably tough game for us but any Cork team is going to have very skilful players. We have contrasting styles. Dublin will want to be physical, but we have the players to try to get them isolated and hopefully do the business.”