FOOTBALL FANS FROM Cork are blue in the face from telling outsiders that they’re saying it wrongly, so one can only wonder how sick Conor Hourihane must be of hearing his surname butchered over the past decade by people from Sunderland, Barnsley, Birmingham and, of course, Dublin.
The West Cork man will make his Premier League debut with Aston Villa this season at the age of 28, having already made his international breakthrough over the last couple of years.
But where staunch Rebel Des Curran started the movement in the gantry for eir Sport during Ireland’s 1-0 friendly defeat to Iceland on 28 March 2017, before RTÉ’s George Hamilton — famed for his consummate delivery of even the most exotic names, ‘Hourihane’ obviously being one of them — brought it to the Irish masses, many of their altogether less cultured British counterparts are still making a total bags of the midfielder’s name.
And so, ahead of his big break in the English top flight, Hourihane has decided to take a stand once and for all.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live Sport — surely among the chief culprits where such botchery is concerned — the Villa star provided a handy set of instructions as to how to say his surname.
'People have been getting it wrong for 10 years!'@ConorHourihane has set a challenge to commentators this season.
— BBC 5 Live Sport (@5liveSport) August 2, 2019
Over to you @BBCMOTD 👀🎙
A special #AVFC podcast 👇
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“No, it’s ‘How-rih-han’,” Hourihane said, immediately dismissing two alternative suggestions made by his BBC interviewer.
How. H-O… Pronounce it like a ‘W’, like — like, ‘How are ya’. How-rih-han.
“It’s not ‘Hoo-ri-han’ — everyone says ‘Hoo-rih-han’ — it’s ‘How’. How. How-rih-han.”
His interviewer seemingly still somewhat sceptical — as if the letters ‘O’ and ‘U’ simply can’t be combined to make such a sound — or soond, as he might well pronoonce it — Hourihane then offered a final incentive to the BBC and commentators across Britain:
“It’s been the same for, obviously, years and years — 10 years since I’ve been in England — so if you change it, I’ll buy you a bottle of wine or something.”
One can only hope his Hou-to guide will travel through the grapevine.
