Curran leaves Cork with big boots to fill
WHAT’LL he miss most? The dry one-liners from Ben O’Connor before away games? The quietness from Brian Murphy sitting next to him on the bus? Or just the sudden removal of one of life’s great privileges: playing for your county?
Ronan Curran recalls his championship debut eight years ago for Cork.
“The expectation that day — of lining out for Cork in championship for the first time, wearing the jersey and representing the club . . . you’d remember the nerves.
“Running onto the field and getting hit by the noise from the crowd, it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You’d be shaken for a few moments by it.
“It went well for us that day in 2003 against Clare. We won well, and it felt like the beginning of something new, which it was.”
Curran himself was something new as well. He was a key part of Cork’s new running game, popping passes to the likes of Tom Kenny and Jerry O’Connor to carry the ball into enemy territory.
But a defender is there to defend as well. The ‘Barrs clubman met some of the best.
“Eoin Kelly of Tipp was one and Seamus Prendergast of Waterford was a guy I had some tough, physical battles with.
“Henry Shefflin I marked a few times — I’d put him up as the best I marked.
“He has everything — pace, he has strength, his movement is very good and obviously he has plenty of hurling. It’s hard to see a weakness. He’s one of those players you’d have to nullify, which would take away from your own game.
“I marked some good ones in training too like Ben O’Connor and Brian Corcoran.”
Together the good ones had good times.
Invited to pick a highlight, Curran opts for his first All-Ireland medal.
“You’d hear a lot of times it’s the journey rather than the destination, but I suppose in 2004 we had it won a few minutes before the final whistle so you could enjoy it.
“Getting to four finals, playing for nine years . . . if you were told that starting off you’d take it, but you’d also think, ‘if I’d won one more’. You’d say that no matter how many you’d win, but we had a great run and were a bit unlucky not to get three-in-a-row.
“A dodgy free in the last minute in 2007 against Waterford kept us out of another final, but you need a bit of luck to win an All-Ireland and maybe we had our luck winning in 2004 and 2005.”
It wasn’t all parades coming around Paddy Barry’s Corner though.
Curran and his teammates were at the centre of divisive strikes in Cork as well.
“That was disappointing. It cost us, when you look back on it. It couldn’t have helped.
“Whoever was right, whoever was wrong, it was disappointing. There were mistakes on both sides and hopefully that’s in the past and we can bring Cork back to where it was in 1999 and in 2004-5. Hopefully there’s another All-Ireland around the corner.
“You look at the work Tipp and Dublin — particularly in Dublin — have put in at underage level and that’s coming to fruition. It’s hard in Cork with so many clubs — and hurling and football — but there are good development officers there, with Brian Murphy and Martin Coleman involved, among others — and I think it’s getting better all the time.”
He won’t be removed totally from the game. As sales manager with Mycro Helmets he’s in touch with intercounty hurlers all the time anyway (“They’ve always been very good to me,”) and he doesn’t anticipate losing touch with his old colleagues either.
We spoke before his clubmate Jimmy Barry-Murphy became manager, and he’d been keen to make the call about his own playing future ahead of any announcement: “I had to make the decision before someone new came in because it was the right decision.”
There’s also the prospect of some underage coaching in the ‘Barrs. Curran won’t be lost to hurling, but he won’t be reaching for the number six jersey next summer for Cork.
“Funny story about that,” he says. “When Brian Corcoran came back, for his first game he reached over and took the number six jersey down off the peg.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘what’ll I say here’., but then he copped it – he was playing full-forward that day – and he took it off and handed it to me.
‘Old habits die hard’, he said.”
It’s a big jersey to fill.
