If a 100-year-old hurling fan ranked Patrick Horgan up with the best that's good enough for me
Cork's Patrick Horgan shoots over the late point from Clare's Brendan Bugler during the 2013 final at Croke Park. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
Even though he'd play in four more All-Ireland finals, the 2013 drawn game with Clare was the closest Patrick Horgan came to claiming a Celtic Cross.
His injury-time point from the right wing, controlling a Christopher Joyce sideline on the run and somehow evading Brendan Bugler's attempt at a hook, deserved to be remembered as an All-Ireland winning score.
As Clint Eastwood warned us in : 'Deserve's got nothing to do with it...'
Horgan wheeled away and pumped his fist to the supporters in the Cusack Stand. Clare conjured an equaliser with the last play.
The Rebels were beaten in the replay, waited eight years to get back to a final and then lost three in the last five seasons. Only in 2024, losing by a point in extra time, did Cork do enough to have a chance at capturing the Liam MacCarthy Cup and they still fell short.
Horgan had an inter-county hurling career as box-office as Eastwood's on the big screen, starting for Cork in all bar seven of their championship games from 2008 to last July, All-Star nominated (yet again) for his efforts across what turned out to be his final campaign. He didn't get to ride off into the sunset with the big prize.
Still, Horgan's status as one of the best hurlers Cork ever produced won't be impacted by his lack of an All-Ireland. He delivered time and again when the pressure was on. The penalty against Limerick down the Páirc is the obvious reference but remember how calmly he slotted last-gasp frees in the 2018 All-Ireland semi-final and '24 decider? Don't forget how unstoppable he was in the 2019 quarter-final, riffling a hat-trick on a day Cork failed to fire against Kilkenny.
There was a cabinet full of Man of the Match baubles and four All-Stars.
If Cork had gotten over the line at any stage between 2017 and '19 he'd have been the Hurler of the Year.
He was lauded as a superstar in waiting from his early teens, helping Glen Rovers to a Féile when he was still U12, shooting the lights out at U21 level when he was still U16.
That season he was honoured with the Christy Ring Trophy as the best 16-year-old hurler in Cork. Previous winners included Tony O'Sullivan, Brian Corcoran, Joe Deane and Ben O'Connor, the new manager who will build a Cork side without Hoggie. They all got their hands on the Liam MacCarthy Cup; you can make a strong argument that Horgan was every bit as good as all of them.
Patrick Horgan stitched some sublime goals for Cork, but he'll be most fondly remembered for his trademark over-the-shoulder points after collecting the sliotar when no one in the ground knew if he'd throw a shimmy left or right or what side he'd strike from. His hurley had a huge bas and serious heft, yet his velvet wrists made it all look effortless.
We'll still be able to watch him light up the pitch in a Glen geansaí. He bagged counties at every level for his club and even in their two recent defeats, rifled 4-19, 2-8 from play.
My late grandfather, Eddie Hogan, was a proud Glen man and lived to the age of 100. The Christy Ring and Jack Lynch side of the 1940s was the greatest of all time in his eyes.
He only viewed a few Cork hurlers since that era as worthy of inclusion in that pantheon, Hoggie among them.
No higher praise.
Every one of the Cork hurling faithful has their own special connection to him. That's something you can't measure in trophies.
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