Grandad Eddie loved Cork sport like no other: Cheering on the Rebels for 100 years

My sporting hero was my grandfather.

My love of sport was shaped by his. Eddie Hogan made it all the way to the age of 100 years, five months and five days before he was called to the great gig in the sky last week.

Right until the end, Grandad Eddie’s passion for family, music, and sport burned strongly. It’s what sustained him for 20 years after the passing of his beloved wife Bríd.

He’d often be found watching Liverpool on the telly while reading a Glen hurling report in The Echo and holding a radio up to his ear for the Munster rugby latest. 

His ability to take it all in was no surprise given he would reminisce about games from the 1930s and ‘40s with staggering clarity.

He was a Liverpool fanatic and visiting Anfield twice in his later years meant a lot to him. We got him over to Parkhead for a Champions League fixture and the revamped Thomond Park for Munster action, but being on the Kop with my brother Cormac and myself was special. That both games ended in home wins, beating Man City in one and Luis Suarez blitzing Norwich for four goals in another, was even sweeter.

Funnily enough, he’d started out supporting Man United but was fuming when they axed Frank O’Farrell as manager. The Cork soccer legend was wronged in his eyes and that was that.

He ended up loving Liverpool as much as he loved to hate United! But sure isn’t that sport? Where there are heroes, there have to be villains. Denis Irwin and Roy Keane were given exemptions. The only Man U stars he cheered on. Cork came first.

As well as United, Kilkenny, Kerry, the All Blacks, Rangers, and more rubbed him up the wrong way. Hearing him give out about them never failed to entertain. When the Cork City v Shels rivalry was at its height, he ended up in a shouting match with Pat Fenlon while leaning over the tunnel at Turner’s Cross! That was only after we persuaded him that as an 80-year-old, it was time to move from the Shed to the stand...

Before I started working with The Echo, five of us used to head to hurling matches together. Grandad Eddie, myself and my wife, Kevin Minihane and his father Finbarr, our designated driver. We’d meet up with the extended family in Thurles and Croke Park. 

GLORY DAYS

Those were glorious times to be a Rebel. Grandad Eddie ranked that Cork crop up there with the best of them, especially Ben O’Connor, Donal Óg Cusack and Seán Óg Ó hAilpín. Their fearlessness in taking on the county board earned his respect as much as their hurling brilliance.

Getting to sit alongside him in 2004 when Brian Corcoran arrowed the point that sealed the All-Ireland against Kilkenny is a memory I’ll cherish forever. 

My wife joined us just after the final whistle. Tears of joy flowed. 

Though we’d a job to convince him to watch the presentation from the Hogan Stand and not wade our way down to the pitch invasion! Sure that was just how passionate he was.

Christy Ring was infallible to Grandad Eddie. 

A quick way to get a rise was to suggest that Henry Shefflin was a challenger to Ring’s throne as the greatest of all time.

In Eddie’s view, the Cork team of the 1940s, four-in-a-row champions and victorious again in 1946, was the best to ever play the game, the most impressive side from any era in any sport. Ring was king but he felt Jack Lynch was a majestic hurler too.

CONNECTION

He would always make the case for Din Joe Buckley as the stickiest man-marker Cork ever produced on the basis of curtailing the deadly Kilkenny marksman Shem Downey, father of Cats camogie aces Ann and Angela Downey. There was a personal connection which cemented it all. Eddie worked in Shell with Christy Ring in the 1950s travelling around East Cork and Waterford delivering oil but it all began in 1938.

That year Eddie’s brother Paddy Hogan, who was a powerhouse defender with the Mon and would go on to win counties with the Glen, was centre-back in an All-Ireland-winning Cork minor team with Ring and Willie Cummins on the wings.

When Ring graduated to senior success, Eddie went to every game, which included cycling to the Munster final when trains were limited due to the impact of the Second World War. He was in the team pictures taken with Liam MacCarthy in 1942 at the train station in Dublin and when they returned to Cork.

Those framed photos took pride of place in his living room alongside his Ring memorabilia like a Railway Cup geansaí the hurling giant wore in ‘52, and his many pictures with family and friends. He had a sliotar signed by Patrick Horgan, which he cherished, courtesy of Cummins, inevitably his favourite brand. Pictures of Ronan O’Gara, Ben O’Connor, Valerie Mulcahy and Nollaig Cleary were also dotted around the house.

Cork camogie and ladies football was important to him and he made it his business to get out to women’s games. The all-conquering Cork ladies footballers were held in high esteem. He ranked Briege Corkery and Rena Buckley alongside Teddy Mac and JBM.

Whenever he was watching athletics and cheering on Sonia, Rob Heffernan or Derval O’Rourke, he’d remind us of the time he beat Joe Kelly in a race to become the fastest schoolboy in Cork. 

Joe went on to became an All-Ireland winner with Cork and subsequently joined the priesthood... a hurler and a priest, a winning combo for Grandad Eddie.

BELIEVE THE HYPE

Before the term ‘hype-man’ was coined he was fantastic at talking up his family’s exploits. That started with his sons’ rugby and soccer exploits, on to his grandchildren’s displays in golf, rugby and more, and through to his great-grandkids’ hurling, camogie and basketball. Everyone wished they were half as good as he made out to be!

He was firm friends with Blackrock hurling stalwarts Gerald O’Leary and Kevin Cummins. Ger was an All-Ireland winner in 1966. 

Everywhere they went for a cup of tea he’d be introducing the staff to a man who collected a Celtic Cross, a feat he felt always deserved to be lauded.

Basketball would never have been one of his sports but he developed a keen interest when my two lads became immersed. And of course, he’d link it to Cork’s sporting heritage by recalling the time Eamonn Young, arguably Cork’s greatest footballer who starred in Railway Cup teams dominated by Kerry men, organised basketball games in Collins’ Barracks in the 1950s. 

As he got older, he wasn’t able to head out to watch his great grandsons’ matches, so our ritual was to call into his house after any big game to fill him in. He’d light up if you walked into the living room after ‘bringing home the bacon’.

How lucky we were to be able to take photos with cups and medals alongside a man who was friends with Christy Ring and had watched the likes of Jack Lynch, Eamonn Young, Charlie Hurley and Noel Cantwell in the flesh.