Caps, box sets, accents - the life of Hogan

THE CHAT was going reasonably well.

Recently-retired Trevor Hogan of Leinster Rugby, living up to his reputation as a bright, engaged character, was chewing the fat about the sport, and then he mentioned the reason he’d had to defer our conversation by half an hour.

“I’m doing history in UCD,” he said. “Diarmaid Feiritear is one of the lecturers, he makes it very interesting.

“I was always interested in history anyway but I’m thinking of getting a qualification as a history teacher.”

Light-bulb time for your columnist.

Trevor, if you’re doing history, you’ll be getting used to papers like the one below us . . .

PLEASE TAKE YOUR TIME TO READ ALL QUESTIONS AND PUT YOUR EXAMINATION NUMBER AT THE TOP OF YOUR ANSWER SHEET.

Question 1: Give your all-time career highlight with examples to support your answer.

Answer: “I couldn’t really take it further than the caps. I only got four but individually they were great. Lining up for the anthem... I remember belting out Amhrán na bhFiann with Donncha Ryan, another Nenagh man, before a Churchill Cup game. Actually, I was talking to Ronan McCormack and John Fogarty recently about another Churchill Cup game, against England. It was one of the few games I got to play with my brother Ray, and he had to go off injured, which made us raise our games another bit.

England were cocky enough, they thought they had it won... and Ronan got a last-minute try to beat them.

That was definitely a highlight.”

Question 2. Opponents at the professional level are all difficult, but one of them must have been harder than others. Give specific examples in support.

Answer: “Paul O’Connell, even though I played with him. In training, if you’d be playing against him, and if you weren’t ready for the session, fully prepared, you’d know all about it. Particularly in the mauls.

That’s something casual observers don’t see. In a game like rugby you’ll have contact sessions once a week and there’s an opportunity to get one over on your opposite number, so you take it. It can get hardy enough.

At the end of training lads will always say, ‘look, that was all part of it’, but there can be times lads are going hell for leather in training, despite the fact that they’re teammates – everyone is trying to get a place on the starting team.”

Question 3. Historically Munster and Leinster have been viewed as polar opposites. Focus on the rural-urban divide in your answer.

Answer: “They’re more similar than you’d think. There was a tendency to exaggerate the differences. There might have been some differences in the levels of support for the teams a while back but that’s changed in Leinster, particularly. Certainly the craic is much the same. People probably aren’t aware that there are plenty of rural lads on the Leinster team, like Sean O’Brien and Shane Horgan, but you’d have as much craic with the D4 lads as anybody else. You could slag them as much as any lad from the country.”

Question 4. The modern Irish pro rugby player is regarded as having one main leisure interest. Outline the appeal of the DVD box set with particular reference to a crime series set in Baltimore.

Answer: “Ha ha, you’d have to put that down to being stuck in hotels so often, for long periods of time. And things travel through the group by word of mouth: you’d be in the dressing-room a few years back and a lad would come in from the showers and talk about The Wire, how good it was and have you seen it and all of that, and within weeks the whole team has seen it. Word of mouth, pure and simple.”

Question 5. With particular reference to Munster rugby players, why do they all speak with the same accent whether they’re from Cork or Limerick or Tipperary? Please address ‘the finest’ as a specifically Tipperary motif in your answer.

Answer: “I don’t know, to be honest. There’s a difference in some of the accents, though – the Limerick accent, the likes of Stephen Keogh... it comes from the way they were brought up and so on, ha ha.

I thought I had developed a neutral accent but when you’re talking to someone who hasn’t heard that Tipperary accent, that twang . . . you can’t get rid of it, what can you do? It’s something to be proud of.

‘The finest’... Yeah, a Tipp one. ‘Sound for that’ as well, that’s another one.”

Thanks, Trevor. The results are in the post.

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