LAST UPDATE | 31 Jan 2023
VETERAN CORK HURLING attacker Patrick Horgan has offered a remarkable summary of their 2022 season, claiming it was “kind of a failure before it kind of even happened.”
The 34-year-old sharpshooter didn’t pull any punches in an interview that won’t go down well with former manager Kieran Kingston, who dropped Horgan mid-way through the Championship.
Horgan was axed from the lineup just weeks after becoming the Championship’s all-time leading scorer and said it was mystifying as he received no explanation and felt he was “really sharp actually at the time.”
With a wasteful Cork struggling in attack in the first-half of the All-Ireland quarter-final against Galway, Horgan was brought on and contributed four points but couldn’t prevent a season ending defeat.
Horgan felt that he personally was “treated unfairly” but offered a more concerning glimpse into the panel when he claimed that things weren’t right all season as “there was stuff going on all the time that really is not supposed to happen on a team.”
“I suppose it was challenging,” said Horgan at the launch of the Allianz Hurling League of watching Cork squander so many chances in that first-half against Galway.
“I didn’t think…I thought for a lot of last year that there was a lot of, I suppose, treatment going on that kind of…that I thought wasn’t fair. That doesn’t mean to say anybody else didn’t think it was fair, I suppose. Anybody who doesn’t play thinks they’re being treated unfairly but, yeah, I was one of them and I thought I was being treated unfairly.”
Horgan started last season’s Allianz League final and all four of their subsequent Munster championship games before being dropped for the All-Ireland series games against Antrim and Galway. Asked if he was surprised by that development, Horgan nodded.
“A small bit, yeah, a small bit,” he said. “I felt I was…we should probably be focusing on this year but if the question is there, yeah, I was surprised, because I thought I was training really well, I felt really sharp actually at the time. But they obviously had different ideas and we’d to go with that really.”
It wasn’t the first time in his career that Horgan was dropped by Kingston. Back in 2017, during Kinston’s first spell in charge, he cut the Glen Rovers man from the team for a number of Allianz League games. Horgan said that from his point of view there was no row or falling out with the management last year before he was benched.
“Maybe I didn’t do enough, I don’t know, but maybe I did, I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I don’t think much went right last year and I don’t know what that was down to. I suppose everybody has their own opinions but I just didn’t think the year was…eh, the year was kind of a failure before it kind of even happened.
“I just think there was stuff going on all the time that really is not supposed to happen on a team. Everybody is supposed to be positive and everybody is supposed to be driving eachother, exactly the way it is happening now.
“When you have fellas training three, four, five times a week, giving it their all, the least they deserve is probably a bit of encouragement. That’s exactly what’s happening at the moment.
“Every fella is driving on, we’re getting a buzz off each other, number one, and a buzz off the positivity around the whole group, number two. When I go to work in the morning, I’m thinking, ‘I can’t wait to go training tonight’, and that’s always a good place to be.”
Horgan lined out in this month’s Munster Hurling League final defeat of Tipperary and scored 1-6. Having recovered from a knee injury picked up while on club duty, he will hope to feature against All-Ireland title holders Limerick in Saturday’s Allianz League opener at Pairc Ui Chaoimh.
Horgan said that last year’s situation didn’t cast any shadow over his Championship top scorer heroics, moving out on his own ahead of Joe Canning after the mid-May win over Waterford.
“No, every player goes through these situations at some stage in your career,” he reasoned. “I probably went through something similar in ’17, early on. These things happen. People come in with different opinions, different mindset and different things they want. Different things from different fellas and you can’t do anything about that.”
Horgan, who will turn 35 this summer, said he didn’t consider retiring and is enthusiastic about a first campaign under new manager Pat Ryan.
“I still enjoy it and I still feel fresh,” he said. “Sometimes when people ask me my age and I haven’t thought about it, I think about it when they ask me and I say, ‘No, that can’t be right!’ Because I feel fresh, I feel fit, probably fitter than ever before. I just have this drive for continuous improvement and any player in the country who has that, you don’t want to give it up when you’re thinking those things.”
- Originally published 6am, updated 8.30am to appear on TheJournal.
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