Munster Club SHC: Glen Rovers will aim to use previous experience

There are many different insights in Patrick Horgan’s new autobiography Hoggie, which is published by Gill.

The chapter ‘County Finals’ will surely need updating, written as it was before the incredible victory for Glen Rovers over St Finbarr’s last Sunday week, which earned the 38-year-old a third medal with his club.

As part of his retrospective on his activities in the green, black and gold, Horgan, with the help of ghostwriter Michael Moynihan, assesses the challenge in going forward to represent Cork in the AIB Munster Club SHC.

“Going out to play in the Munster club is tricky because it’s so competitive in Cork that you can’t plan for it,” he writes, “even the best club teams can’t presume that they’re going to be competing in November or December in the Munster club.

“Then there’s the famine factor. When we won the county in 2015, our first title in 26 years, we’d done all we wanted to do. The Munster club championship was the last thing on our minds.

“That year, we were drawn against Ballygunner, who were at home in Waterford – Walsh Park – where they’ve won about 88 championships in a row. It was a terrible day, rainy, cold. We were in the dressing room, thinking, ‘This is hell.’ We were just in no form for more games, particularly when we hadn’t been planning for them on the basis that the county title had been our goal.

“Ballygunner, on the other hand, are a club who can plan their provincial campaigns months in advance because they have such a stranglehold on the Waterford championship. So the cards were all in their favour. Still, we gave them enough of it that day. If we had been more tuned in, or more experienced – if it had been the following year, even – we might have won it.”

The following year was more fruitful: the Glen beat Patrickswell at the Gaelic Grounds but then fell to Ballyea of Clare in the final in Thurles. While 2016 was their last county title before this year, they did represent Cork in 2019, having lost to Imokilly in the county final – Horgan makes no bones in the book about how difficult it is to go again in such circumstances, though they only lost by two points to a Borris-Ileigh side that would go on to defeat Ballygunner in the provincial final.

Now, as the Blackpool outfit prepare for another tilt at Munster, aiming to claim the crown for the first time since 1976, they will hope that past experience can count against the Clare champions Inagh-Kilnamona, for whom it will all be new following their maiden county championship victory.

Also in the Glen’s favour is the fact that the game will be on Cork soil. While they might have preferred SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh, the fact that there is a backlog of county finals this weekend means that the main stadium is hosting five games from Friday-Sunday inclusive and so the Glen will be in action in Páirc Uí Rinn.

Familiarity with the venue, as well as the far shorter travel time, should be a help – it’s worth noting what a novelty it is as, apart from Sarsfields’ 2024 semi-final win over another Clare side, Feakle, you have to go back to 2013 and Midleton’s loss to Sixmilebridge for the last time a Cork team played a Munster senior game in Cork.

There is an added incentive in the fact that the winners of Sunday’s game will have home-county advantage in the semi-final against Thurles Sarsfields.

While there was plenty of emotion in the Glen after the county title, equally there was a resolve among players and management that there is another opportunity at hand and they will look to make the most of it.