Horgan lucked out in Cork barren spell

KILLINAN END

Patrick Horgan’s lengthy career with Cork has ended without the ultimate reward of an All-Ireland medal. Every county has experienced significant gaps between successes down the decades, though what constitutes significant will vary depending on the county. Horgan’s fate has real impact when both the duration of the player’s career and the likely expectation at its outset are factored in. Hats of many varieties would have to be eaten now by anyone asked to predict back in 2008 how Horgan’s career might unfold across the almost two decades ahead.

This was just three years on from Cork’s previous All-Ireland win even if the county’s under-age supply lines were already spluttering. Misguided loyalty and memory of better days underpinned naïve assumptions that a Cork team probably already in decline even as early 2005 – remember the white-knuckle finish to the All-Ireland semi-final v Clare? – had one last kick in it. Joe Brolly’s claim that the Cork strikes were at the root of all their ills might need some nuance but they surely achieved little of lasting consequence.

It seems unlikely that the existence of Frank Murphy was the fundamental issue either.

A few results over the years suggested a new impetus in Cork. In 2010 Tipp were beaten by ten points on Leeside. Again, hat-eaters might have assumed reasonably they’d just watched the team that might thwart Kilkenny’s drive for five in September. Of course, they were right, but this was the falsest of false Cork dawns. Munster Final defeat against Waterford awaited before a good hiding from Kilkenny in the semi-final.

Had Cork won in 2013 maybe St Jude would have got Hurler of the Year. Never was an undeserved win so close. Clare might have relied on an unlikely source for their equaliser in the end but should not have been in that position in the first instance. When Patrick Horgan scored his second point from play in the 71st minute it gave Cork the lead for the first time. Any notion that they “should” have won is bunkum. The real measure of that Cork side was not so much the replay defeat that year as the drubbing they took from Tipp in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final. Any sense of progress melted away that day.

Even at that point though few would have thought that Horgan would have to wait another decade to even feature in an All-Ireland Final. Being an in-betweener in a normally successful county is not an easy place. Horgan did distance himself from the notion that an All-Ireland medal is the only measure of relevance and success, and he is right of course. Many players went their career unrewarded while others who were hardly their equals wore medals to beat the band.

Jimmy Smyth of Ruan and Clare achieved such a reputation in the game that he was named at corner-forward on the Munster hurling team of the Millenium. He hurled for nineteen years in the championship for Clare without even a Munster championship medal. Then again, it is obvious that in his time Clare were not seen consistently as potential All-Ireland winners in the way that traditionally Cork have been.

Another player well worth consideration in the context of long loyal service without the ultimate reward is Limerick’s former goalkeeper Tommy Quaid. Like Horgan, when Quaid made his championship debut in 1976 it was just three years on from Limerick’s All-Ireland win in the rain against Kilkenny. Despite trailing behind a very strong Cork team in those years Limerick retained great expectations. That came to fruition in 1980 when a late Olly O’Connor goal gave them an unexpected Munster Final win avenging a League Final replay defeat a few months earlier.

They repeated the trick in 1981 against Clare when Joe McKenna scored 3-3 from play. But the All-Irelands were won by Galway and Offaly and are still seen by the Shannon as ones that got away.

The consistency of Tommy Quaid was hardly one of Limerick’s problems in years that were barren in respect of the ultimate prize but fertile in potential. Limerick made great strides in the National League of 1983-85, winning the latter two. Replays thwarted them against Cork in 1983 and ’87 – as did John Fenton’s bullet - despite players like Leonard Enright, Joe McKenna and Tommy Quaid leading the charge.

If longevity without the ultimate reward is a disappointment, at least the sheer durability of a player an elite level is, as Horgan implies its own reward. Tommy Quaid takes some beating in this area. In 1976 when he lined out in the shiny new Páirc Uí Chaoimh against Cork in the Munster Final one of Limerick’s playing substitutes was Pat Heffernan of Blackrock (Kilfinane-Ardpatrick).

When Tommy played his last championship game some seventeen years later in Ennis in May 1993 against Clare, one of Limerick’s starting forwards was Pat Heffernan of Blackrock. Father and son. Quite an achievement for the Heffernan’s and no mean feat for Tommy Quaid to stand between the sticks bridging the generations.