Cork Masters hurling team looking to kick on in 2025

After an encouraging first outing, the Cork masters hurling team are keen to improve for the second year of the competition.

While the football edition has been in operation for more than two decades, 2024 was the first time that there was a hurling equivalent. Cork entered along with eventual champions Tipperary, Limerick, Galway, Kildare and Wexford, finishing third after the round-robin stage. That earned them a place in the B final, losing out to Galway, who were in fourth place.

Cork manager Seán Horgan is looking forward to the new campaign.

“The season will start in May,” he says.

“It’s looking like it’ll be the same six teams, each playing each other once and then there are two finals. Last year, we finished third and so we played Galway in the B final.

“It was a game that we should have won on the day but we lost by four points. It was disappointing, but it was a lesson learned for the lads.

“Tipperary won the overall competition but they had a very strong squad – they had the likes of Eoin Kelly, Lar Corbett and Redser O’Grady all playing, along with one or two more.”

It was a learning experience for Cork, laying a platform on which to build.

“We feel that we’d be in a much strong position facing into it this year,” Horgan says.

“We’re hoping to build it, year on year, and see how we progress. If we could get one or two big players in key positions, that would make a big difference.

“We know the things that we have to work on and the type of player that we’re going to need to move it on. We’re going out looking for them now.

“Certainly, we’d be aiming to get to a final again and then, hopefully, win one.

“Getting a couple more former inter-county players would be something that we’d be looking to progress for the coming year.

“We found we struggled against Tipperary, like everyone else did, because their team was stacked and it was very hard to compete. There’s no rule against it!”

Horgan is joined by coach Cormac O’Reilly and selectors Tadgh Lyons and Rob Oldham, while the squad also shows a good geographical spread.

“We had players from Newmarket and Kanturk, all the way down to Clonakilty and O’Donovan Rossa,” he says.

“The season started at the end of August last year and finished around the middle of October.

“We use the Farm at UCC to train. We trained every Wednesday and then we’d be playing on a Saturday but if we didn’t have a match we’d train on the Saturday instead.

“You wouldn’t get a full complement, obviously Saturdays are busy for people with kids, but generally on a Wednesday you’d get a fairly high turnout. Junior and intermediate clubs would be training on Tuesday and Thursday, so Wednesday suited a lot of guys.

“Every player enjoys it and if we could get more matches, it would be great.

“Obviously, with Cork having such a strong hurling tradition, there’s a big interest in the Masters hurling team.

“As well as the training and matches, there was a great social aspect to it, too. After each game, the teams would come together for refreshments and it was great to meet the guys from the other counties.”