TWO WEEKS OUT from their championship opener against Limerick, Cork suffered an emphatic six-point league final defeat to Munster rivals Waterford.
It meant successive heavy losses for Cork in national finals, after they were gunned down by the Treaty in last August’s All-Ireland decider.
Star forward Patrick Horgan insists it was a positive league for Kieran Kingston’s team regardless of the less than ideal conclusion.
“Obviously it was disappointing to lose the game but when you look back at it and take the league all as one: Did we get what we wanted out of it? I think we did.
“We have a lot of new players who got a lot of time and a lot of them showed that they’re really up to it,” continued Horgan. “It was disappointing on Sunday but overall I think we showed what we’re capable of and there were a lot of positives to take from it.
“There were even positives to take from the final. There were six or seven minutes to go and from the way the game was going and the goals they were getting you would nearly think the game was over but there was only four points in it and we hadn’t done much and our efficiency in shooting wasn’t great.
“There are bigger days and ahead and they’re what you need to be right for.
“Given how many players we used and the performances we put in throughout the whole league, I think we have to take positives from it,” he added.
Cork have a tight turnaround before they open their Munster round robin against the reigning All-Ireland champions
Horgan backed his team to respond in the right way from the Waterford defeat.
“When you get to a final you want to perform. We didn’t. It was clear for everyone to see we didn’t play at all like, at all.
“Hurt that way yes because it’s so hard to get to finals and there’s so much competition out there at the moment.
“When you take the Waterford team even the other night, they have lost a lot of finals in the last couple of years. That’s a journey they’ve been on and I suppose we’re on a journey too.
“I know losing finals isn’t great but you can see a bit of consistency coming as regards getting to a final last year. Only one team beat us last year and that was Limerick.
“This year getting to the league final I think the team is definitely moving in the right direction and hopefully we can keep that up.”
Horgan was speaking at the launch of his new business venture Pro Hurling, an online coaching platform for youngsters aged between five and 16.
He says it focuses on how he’d have liked to be trained as a youngster.
“For the first four months of skills, we’ve one skill per week,” he says. “Nothing else, just that one specific skill. If there was a kid on it for those 20 weeks they’re touching probably every skill in the game.
“If they’re going practicing all them in 20 weeks no-one can come back and say they’re not better for it.”
It’s notable that no yellow sliotars appear on the platform. Horgan has been a public critic of the new ball in hurling and expanding on his problem with the sliotar he says:
“People are missing the point of what I’m trying to say, I’m getting myself in the height of trouble.
“I couldn’t care less if they were pink, they’re certainly not the same. It’s not just the colour – I don’t care what colour they are – and when I talk about the yellow sliotar it’s not the colour, they just don’t play the same.
“They’re like rocks. I don’t think the weight is evenly distributed in the middle of the ball and the skin is definitely not the same skin on the outside. If you catch a white one you can nearly feel the grip sticking to your hand, but I think the yellow is kind of shiny, whatever leather they’re using.
“There’s no-one going to say they’re the same but I don’t know any more. If there’s a panel in charge of testing the balls there’s no way they could have tested the white against the yellow and say they’re the same.”
Now in his 15th inter-county season the 33-year-old says the ambition of winning a Liam MacCarthy is not the sole reason he continues to hurl with the Rebels.
“I think I said this before and my mind will never change on this, and it’s not because I don’t have one – because I’d love one – but if the only reason I was playing was to win an All-Ireland, I wouldn’t be playing.
“You can’t do it, because it has gone too serious. There’s a lot of training, you need to be prepared in stuff like your diet and there’s too much. So if you don’t enjoy it, you are actually wasting your time. I love the process of it really, I love eating properly and showing up to training and love every minute of training and striking the ball.
“Everything about hurling is what I love, and if it was just to win, it would have been a fairly disappointing 15 years, but I’ve actually enjoyed every year, apart from one or two where we might have went out early and didn’t get a chance to drive on. But in general I just love hurling and I love playing it, and that’s what keeps me going.”
Pro Hurling is Ireland’s first Hurling e-Academy. It is aimed at boys and girls aged 5 to 16 giving a unique insight into the skills some of the country’s best hurlers value most. To sign-up go to prohurling.ie
