'I have to remind myself ‘hey, you’re nearly 34’. But I don’t feel it' - Patrick Horgan goes again
Patrick Horgan is now in his 15th season as a Cork senior hurler.
In the winter they’d move the summer game out of the cold.
Eoghan Cronin, Brian Moylan and a few more teenagers would repair to the ball alley in Glen Rovers to sharpen their touch, but the practice usually had a competitive edge.
“When it got too bad altogether we’d go the ball alley,” says Cronin now, a couple of decades later. “Two or three months playing games of squash. But with hurleys.”
In those competitions there was always a number one seed who ruled with an iron fist. And with golden wrists.
“We’d take Patrick on but we were wasting our time, really. Brian Moylan would be able to get up near him but he always had too much. The rest of us were fooling ourselves. And a lot of the time I wondered how hard he was really trying in those games, to be honest. He was that good.”
That’s Patrick Horgan, Cronin’s contemporary.
Time is an important thread in the Horgan narrative now, in his fifteenth season as a Cork senior hurler.
Twenty years ago he and Cronin won a Feile na nGael title with Glen Rovers, and in the intervening two decades’ service with the Blackpool club Cronin saw opponents plot and scheme in every way to stop Horgan.
“They came up with plans because they had no other choice, really. Despite everything that teams threw at us, they rarely stopped him - it was more about keeping his impact as low as possible, and that was very difficult at club level. And the focus on him always let in other players to shine for us. We would have played a lot of league games and challenge games while he was on duty with Cork, so other players stepped in and learned their own trade, and they brought that to the table when Patrick and the other lads came back in from Cork.
“His freetaking was always part of that. Before he came on the scene at club level we had the likes of John Anderson taking frees for us in the preceding years, and he was very good, very consistent, but when your main scorer is the free taker on Patrick’s level . ..
“You’d see other club teams where the free taker is in and out of the team, or maybe he’s just in the team to take frees, but that hasn’t been the case for the Glen for 15 years.
“His accuracy is phenomenal. We probably take that for granted in the club but his percentages are unbelievable. Long may it continue for the club. And for Cork.”
For Horgan himself, Cork has been part of his life almost as long as the Glen.
“The 1999 All-Ireland final is the one that stands out for me, but I was going to games long before that - it seemed like every second week we were in Thurles.
“And I ended up playing with a few of those 1999 players ten years later. Was it strange at the time? It was.”
One of his early sessions with the Cork seniors was in Mallow, where he found himself sharing a dressing-room with “Joe Deane, Niall McCarthy, Seán Óg (Ó hAilpín) . . . those guys were giants to me, I looked up to them so much, it was a dream to play with them - and for them to help me. They were as sound as you’d expect when I came into the set-up. Now when fellas come into the Cork camp I try to be the same with them, but with a lot of the younger fellas who’ve come in to us recently, they’re playing like they’ve been there for years. I see some of them and have to remind myself it’s only their first or second year at senior inter county, they’re ready to play at that level instantly.
“Obviously they’re going to get better and better. They might need some guidance now and again but they’re so mature in their play already, they don’t need that much guidance.”
The recent defeat by Waterford in the Allianz Hurling League final is shelved: “If you’ve a bad day at the office, and we had in the league final, that gets highlighted. We had four or five very good games before that and took a lot of positives out of those. And we took some positives out of the league final, too. Our efficiency and shooting weren’t the best, so if we improve that we’ll be a lot closer the next time.”
The next time. Horgan is 34 this year (“May,” says Cronin. “I know because my birthday is in June.”) so the exit door is nearer than the entrance.
“I’ve been lucky, I haven’t had serious injuries,” says Horgan.
“The odd niggle but nothing to keep me out long-term. I’m probably one of the lucky ones, though it’s not something I think about. I mentioned the younger players earlier. We’ll be in the dressing-room chatting away after training with Cork, say, and I have to remind myself they’re a lot younger.
“In my head I think I’m still in my mid-twenties like them, and I have to remind myself ‘hey, you’re nearly 34’. But I don’t feel it. I still enjoy it and that’s the most important thing.”
Back in Glen Rovers they appreciate his value on and off the field, though Eoghan Cronin says Horgan is so visible at the club that that can be a double-edged sword.
“People associate the club with him and it’s a strong selling point, just as it is with clubs all over Ireland - ‘your kids can play for the same club as Patrick Horgan’ or whoever the county player is from your club.
“With us it’s probably something we haven’t tapped into as much as we could have, and ironically enough that could be because he’s such an integral part of the club. When he comes down to the Glen there’s no fanfare. He’s just there. I know a lot of intercounty players might arrive back at the club after however many months away training and playing with the county, but he’s a constant in the club.
“He’s always down there, and that’s something we had from years ago - we went to the field to puck around, to the gym to hang around together, to have a bottle of orange watching a match in the bar.
“We always knew you could drop down to the club and there’d be someone to chat to or puck around with, and while we might have taken that for granted, we all still do that.”
Cronin and Horgan now share the lessons learned in the ball alley all those years ago in prohurling.ie (see panel).
A lot has changed since then. A lot hasn’t.
“Patrick still gives lads a tip or two in the few minutes before training with the Glen, a few things to improve their game,” says Cronin. “He’s very generous like that, very good to help other players get better. The likes of Simon Kenefick and Evan Murphy benefit from that, and hopefully more of the lads will too in time.”
The advice has to be tempered the odd time with reality. When Cronin was working his way back to full fitness after some injuries a few years ago his contemporary had some advice.
“One evening he was telling me I should shorten the hurley when I was shooting as I went down the wing with the ball, but he couldn’t understand why my shots were dropping ten yards short of the goal.
“That’s because his shots were going over the bar from fifty yards, no bother. And of course, that’s because his wrists are still different to everybody else’s.”
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