Alan Browne v Jimmy Barry Murphy: Vote for Cork's best city hurlers
Have your say in The Battle of the Bridge.
WITH your help, we’re looking to pick the best hurler from either side of St Patrick's Bridge from the last 50 years of action.
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. Your votes will decide who goes through and you can see the full list of 16 northside and 16 southside players here.
OVER a 20-year period, from 1992-2011, Alan Browne played 71 championship games for Blackrock.
In those games, he accounted for a scoring output of 33-219 – and bear in mind that the Rockies didn’t reach a county final between 1986 and 1998, or again from 2003 until 2017.
There was a purple patch for the club in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as a 14-year wait for the Seán Óg Murphy Cup was ended and three titles were put together in a four-year period from 1999-2002.
Against UCC in the 1999 final, he scored 2-2, having notched 1-1 in the defeat to Imokilly the year before. In the 2001 final against Erin’s Own, he scored 3-8, a record; and when the title was retained against Newtownshandrum in 2002, he scored 1-4.
The fact that Newtown held him scoreless a year later and turned the tables on Blackrock was hardly a coincidence.
We haven’t even mentioned his exploits for Cork yet: just 18 when he made his debut against Limerick in the league in 1994, he came into a Rebels side that was misfiring in the mid-1990s but he scored one of the goals as Waterford were beaten in the 1998 National League final, a key victory in terms of laying a foundation for the All-Ireland win the following year.
Cork played four championship matches in 1999 and Browne didn’t start any of them – however, he was introduced as a sub in each one of them and had such an impact that he was nominated for an All-Star Award along with Kevin Murray, also used solely from the bench.
By 2000, he had regained a place in the starting 15 and played a key role in the Munster final win over Tipperary.
When, at the end of 2002, the Cork panel felt the need to go on strike, it was notable that Browne was one of those involved in the initial press conference and also in securing a deal with Cork County Board. With the team back on the field in 2003, he was captain and lifted the Munster Cup after victory over Waterford, giving him a third provincial medal.
The All-Ireland final defeat to Kilkenny was to prove to be his last match for Cork, meaning he just missed out on the victories of the following two years – but he had done his county some service.
“Six-foot-two, eyes of blue, Jimmy Barry-Murphy, we love you!”
What can be said about the legendary JBM that has not already been said?
In an inter-county hurling career spanning the period 1975-86, there were only two seasons where he didn’t win a Munster championship medal – 1980 and 1981, and in both of those campaigns, the national league was won. Five All-Ireland hurling medals (1976, 1977, 1988, 1984 and 1986) as a player were added to in 1999 as he managed Cork to end a nine-year wait and he is one of just 14 men in history to have won the Liam MacCarthy Cup as a player and a manager.
A winner of minor All-Ireland medals in both codes – 1971 in hurling and 1972 in football – he shot to prominence as Cork won the football All-Ireland in 1973 but unfortunately that success was not built upon and Kerry’s dominance for the rest of the decade was a factor in the St Finbarr’s man opting to focus on hurling at inter-county level in 1980.
Having been a key part of the three-in-a-row side, he was captain as Cork lost the All-Ireland finals of 1982 and 1983 to Kilkenny but the Rebels bounced back to beat Offaly in 1984 and backed that up with victory over Galway in 1986, his last inter-county match. Fittingly, he scored the final point of the match to secure the win.
“Hurling was developing all the time,” he said.
“The time of the three in a row, it was very direct – one-dimensional, really – but by the mid-1980s there was more emphasis on the coaching side and the preparation. The physical training had become a lot bigger part of it.
His tally of 10 Munster medals – two separate five-in-a-rows – is matched only by Tipperary’s John Doyle. There were also two Munster football medals. He has four club All-Irelands with the Barrs, two in hurling and two in football, with a total of 10 county senior medals won.
“When I started off with the Barrs, I was only thinking about playing senior hurling and football for the club, that was my only ambition,” he said.
“But then, that graduates to playing minor for Cork and playing on the senior team. To have done that in hurling and football was a dream come true.” He did all of that and more.
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