Vote for Cork's best hurlers north and south of St Patrick's Bridge

Fri, 30 Sep, 2022 - 16:13

Eamonn Murphy

THERE IS something special about city hurling, that blend of skill and steel, the quick ball, the hard hits and goals galore.

With your help, we’re looking to pick the best hurler from either side of the River Lee from the last 50 years of action.

The Echo has pitched some of Cork’s finest hurling stars from the northside and southside of Cork city together for a series of fun head-to-head battles on EchoLive.ie over the next two months.

Douglas’s Mark Harrington battling Glen Rovers legend Patrick Horgan. Picture: Eddie O’Hare

These contests are never going to happen in reality, but we thought you might enjoy letting your imaginations run wild, pitting their various qualities and achievements against each other.

We just love reflecting on and reliving the amazing deeds of all of our great stickmen. Really, this is just an opportunity for us to celebrate all of them.

There is of course no definitive answer as to who wins the various battles, but your opinion is as good as anyone else’s.

It’s a bit of fun for sports fans, and we have a huge population of those, and it’s a chance for you to express your admiration for the unbelievable array of hurlers we have in Cork on both sides of the River Lee.

Picking the best from the Cork hurlers of the last 50 years is a tough task, a mission impossible of sorts given the high standards set by our hurling favourites.

Bishopstown’s Pa Cronin is tackled by Ballyhea’s Liam O’Connor. Cronin was unlucky not to make the southside list. Picture: Eddie O’Hare

That’s where we need your help. The Echo has selected a ‘squad’ of top Rebel hurlers since 1972, who played with clubs either on the northside or southside of the city and our readers’ votes will decide the last man standing.

Each day we’ll be putting forward two outstanding hurlers from either side of the bridge for you to choose between. Across the next few weeks as we trim the original 32 candidates to 16 and eventually down to final two.

From there, the ultimate winner will be selected by voting online at echolive.ie How did we decide who was eligible? This is Cork we’re talking about, not just your run-of-the-mill county, so even shortening it to a list of 32 candidates was a challenge for The Echo crew. We gave John Horgan (northside) and Denis Hurley (southside) the last word on the 16 hurlers picked from each side of the river.

Some players were very unlucky to miss the final cut, including Na Piarsaigh’s Christy Connery and Darren Mannix, Kieran McGuckin (Glen Rovers), Bishopstown’s Pa Cronin, still delivering for his club on this season’s evidence, Blackrock stalwart John Browne.

Blackrock’s John Browne, one of the best defenders of his era, tries to get out of defence past Cloyne’s Philip Cahill. Picture by Des Barry

To be chosen for The Battle Of The Bridge participants had have hurled post-1972 and to have come through the underage structures of their sport in Cork.

We’ve matched the contestants up after putting them in alphabetical order across the two categories, northside against southside.

It will go from 32 entries to 16, to 8, to 4 and then the final two over a period of four weeks once this competition starts. From the last 16 onwards we will keep the pairings ‘northside v southside’ as far as possible.