Different clubs, but Hogans keep title in family

Hear about the brothers who won Kilkenny senior hurling titles three seasons apart with two different clubs?

Keith and Brian Hogan’s stories will be one for GAA pub quizzes for years to come after the former with Clara on Sunday followed up on his inter-county playing brother’s 2010 achievement with O’Loughlin Gaels.

Why not for the same clubs? As Keith explained: “Basically, a long story short, my parents got married and were living in town and had my two brothers, Brian and Barry. They moved out to Clara then where they bought the house and settled.

“I was born a year later in Clara. I was born beside the likes of Lester Ryan and Liam and Tom and Mick McDonald. I was baptised in Clara, went off to primary school in Clara, grew up with the boys and that was it.

“The boys are pure-bred O’Loughlins and I am pure-bred Clara. It is a weird situation but it works, we don’t fall out over it.”

Hogan impressed in Sunday’s edgy win over Carrickshock, notching 10 points, one from play. But perhaps his best decision was deferring to Ryan for the all-important close-range free, which he struck to the net to put Clara ahead with four minutes of normal time left.

“Me And Lester were practising penalties all year and it was literally before the game that the manager and ourselves made the call that if we were going to go for goal Lester would take it. He has a kind of an Anthony Nash style. He came up and said he got the orders from the line to go for it, so I stepped aside. As he showed, he had great nerves and he buried it.

“In a county final, if you went for it and missed it you mightn’t feel too bad in the morning but if you didn’t go for it you would wake up thinking ‘we should have just went for the jugular’.”

Clara now face a quick turnaround to their Leinster quarter-final against Oulart-the-Ballagh on Sunday but Ryan says their experience as reigning provincial and All-Ireland intermediate champions will stand to them.

“The fact we were there last year means we appreciate what it is to win it. The fact it came around again so soon we realise what an opportunity it is. We have a brilliant opportunity again, thankfully the journey is still going.”