The day after Cork played Tipp in Semple Stadium in 2011, the papers were full of hosannas to the Tipperary forwards. Every one of them had scored from play; Lar Corbett and Eoin Kelly had banged in a goal apiece; Noel McGrath had speared two sideline cuts over the black spot. They were All-Ireland champions, looking every inch of it.
Hidden in plain sight, however, was graduation day for Patrick Horgan. It was his 14th championship game for Cork and in 11 out of the previous 13 he had either not started or not finished. And though he was taken off that day against Tipp, it was an injury-time substitution with the game long gone and his work long done.
It was his first day as Cork’s first-choice free-taker, with Ben O’Connor having passed on those duties over the winter.
On a day when Cork couldn’t match pace with Tipp’s assault on the scoreboard, Horgan held his end up. He scored 13 points, 10 from frees.
From that day to this, across another 16 summer matches, the only time he hasn’t played 70 minutes was his sending off against Limerick last year.
Of the side that will face Tipp on Sunday, only Shane O’Neill has played more games for Cork.
Nobody has scored more – from play or from frees – and nobody is likely to this side of 2020, time and injury-related tides permitting.
In those 30 matches Horgan has been responsible for 11-173, 7-61 of it from play. Only Paudie O’Sullivan’s 6-25 is anywhere in that vicinity.
He is their go-to, their talisman. At 26, he is in the prime of his hurling life and the point of the spear for Cork. When they fell at the last fence in 2013, he made sure to brush it off and to stand up for his younger teammates. He does it yet.
“I’ve said this a lot of times, and I’ve stuck by it – this team is a good team and we know that any time we perform, we’re really hard to beat.
“I think we’re after bringing in a bit of consistency now, in our last three games we’ve improved in every one of them. That’s a good sign of a team. Going forward, if we improve again, we might be alright.
“Fellas are fierce strong and fit, that was the plan of the management, that every year, every training session you go to, you need to progress. I think fellas are coming to training knowing that they have to improve before they go home and I that’s what’s happening.”
After beating Limerick in the Munster final, every Cork player you spoke to drilled home the same message – they’d lost too many finals not to come away from the Páirc victorious this time around. Horgan reiterates it now but doesn’t buy the theory that losing last year’s All Ireland sent them into a winter-long funk.
“It’s weird, I can’t remember feeling too bad about it. Obviously, you feel terrible for a couple of weeks but we went on a bit of a holiday as a team and as soon as we came back we went training.
“And as soon as we went training we knew by the way fellas were going for it, that we were going to give it everything to try and get back there this year.
“We’re all young and we’re all eager to play and eager to train. They wanted to come back and do better than last year and hopefully get a better result.
“We were after being in a lot of finals but we just couldn’t get over the line. We played well in a lot of games, but winning gives us that bit of confidence.
“If you look back, we played two league finals, one against Galway and one against Kilkenny, and both teams were just really good.
“We got beaten in a Munster final after extra-time, we were beaten in an All-Ireland after a replay. It’s not that we were playing badly, we were just coming up against good teams on the day.
“In the Munster final, I think we showed how good we were when things opened up in the second half.
“There was no choice, really. We had to do something to get a cup, get a bit of silverware. We had the night and we enjoyed it, but since then it’s been nothing but trying to be 100 per cent for the Tipp game.”
