The big interview: John Browne on being part of rich Blackrock history and winning with Cork

THIS Saturday night, Blackrock National Hurling Club will celebrate its 140th anniversary.

The occasion with be marked with a special event at the clubhouse on Church Road, where the club’s county championship winners will be the guests of honour.

The victorious 2020 squad will obviously be well-represented. Prior to their ending of an 18-year gap, the Rockies had won three titles in four years and central to that period of supremacy was John Browne.

He had been member of the side that had won the 1994 county minor title – a first at that grade since the late 1970s.

“We hadn’t won much at under-age,” he says, “I think we won a city U16 league and a city U12 championship.

Timmy Murphy got back involved that summer and it just clicked for us. Adrian Coughlan and Wayne Sherlock were still U16 but they were huge players for us.

“Adrian was the free-taker and Wayne was full-back – I was centre-back and we’d usually swap at some stage in a game!

“We were eight points down v Midleton in the county final and came back and that gave us huge belief.”

Browne made his senior debut the following year.

“We played Avondhu down in Watergrasshill,” he says, “I’d say I only touched the ball two or three times but that was enough!

“The club probably weren’t going too well at senior level at the time so it was easier for fellas coming out of minor level to break into it.”

PROGRESS

That marked a decade since the club’s 29th and most recent county championship in 1995. The following year, Blackrook took “a pasting off the Barrs” as Browne puts it, but from there they began to build. With five members of the Cork side that won the 1997 All-Ireland U21 title, they reached the county semi-final that year, losing to a last-minute goal against Sarsfields.

In 1998, they went one better, making the final and losing out to a strong Imokilly side and what had become a 14-year gap was bridged with victory over UCC in the final of 1999.

“I always think, whatever team you’re playing in, that’s your team and you’re looking to create your own history,” Browne says.

“It’s great to have the people around who have the experience of winning and it’s nice to see those photos and feel part of something in that sense.

“In 1999, most of the team were very young and so we wouldn’t have felt a huge amount of pressure. We just felt that we could keep on pushing and pushing and that we’d get there.

“Having Jim Cashman there was huge – he’d always give you tips and encourage you. He was brilliant, what a centre-back, and to be able to say I did play alongside him was an absolute honour.

“There was a blend with him and the likes of Fergal [Ryan] and Alan [Browne, John’s brother], who had broken on to the Cork team, and that helped the whole group.

There was fierce pride in playing for Blackrock and I would see that in the young fellas today.”

Of course, 1999 was extra-special as John and Alan Browne, along with Wayne Sherlock and Fergal Ryan, helped Cork to win a first All-Ireland in nine years. They joined their brother Richard in claiming Celtic Crosses, with their older brother having been on the team in 1986.

Every nine-year-old playing hurling in Cork dreams of wearing the red jersey but for John Browne that ambition must have seemed closer than most.

“Myself and Alan went up together, he was about 12,” he says.

“We stayed with cousins and we watched it in Hill 16. I don’t remember a huge amount about it other than I was right up against the wire!

“A lot of the goals, thankfully, were in that end. Tomás Mul got a cracking goal, Kevin Hennessy too, and there was great excitement. At nine years of age, you think this is normal or whatever.

“We got to go around the place to all of Richard’s matches and then just practised at home ourselves. 

Deccie O’Sullivan, the physio, was next door and he was a fantastic hurler – growing up, he was probably the best of the lot of us.

“Alan and him were a few years older than me so it was a great challenge. Alan was a forward so he’d be practising trying to catch the ball and we’d be trying to stop him.”

Further county medals followed in 2001 and 2002, while John – who works as a dentist – was part of Cork’s All-Ireland wins of 2004 and 2005.

After his playing days ended, he was happy to give back. Having had a stint as senior manager a decade ago, he is currently involved on the under-age side.

“I was in charge of the U21s who had won the county,” he says. “I was helping out with the intermediate team and I kind of fell into it really, it wasn’t something I was planning.

“It was probably a little bit too early, really, especially with a young family. Certainly, I didn’t anticipate the amount of time and work involved and, if I was ever to do it again, I might make a better fist of it!

“I’m with the U16s at the moment and that’s very enjoyable.

“Fergal Coakley, who’s the club secretary, is involved, so is Alan Cummins and you have Garry Norberg, who’s still playing. We have Denis Moran as well, who played senior for Wicklow and played for the Rockies when he moved down.

“You see the kids improving all the time.”

INFLUENTIAL

In any club, one generation inspires another and such links have always been present in Blackrock.

“Down around Blackrock, you’d see Tom and Jim [Cashman], Dermot McCurtain, who were all playing with Cork, and you’d aspire to be like them,” Browne says.

“These people who had done it, they would say that they had done the same things training-wise as we were, so it definitely became more attainable.

When I was a young fella in Beaumont, Jim came in to coach us and I see Alan Connolly doing similar nowadays.

“A few years later, I was playing with Jim and still learning from him."