Patrick Horgan has said that he was disappointed with how he was treated by the Cork senior hurling management team last year.
Cork didn’t hit the heights in 2022 and, somewhere along the way, the 34-year-old forward became one of the fall guys as he was dropped for their two All-Ireland qualifier games against Antrim and Galway.
The Rebels had had a very shaky start to the Munster championship, losing to both Limerick and Clare, but they showed signs of a resurgence by beating Waterford and then Tipperary to qualify for the All-Ireland series.
But having became the championship’s All-time leading scorer early in that defeat of Waterford, Horgan was substituted in the second half. He was the first sub off the following week in their annihilation of Tipperary too, and as it turned out, that would be the last game he’d start under Kieran Kingston and his management team.
The Glen Rovers attacker was speaking at the launch of this year’s Allianz National Hurling League when he criticised last year’s set-up.
“I suppose it was challenging,” he said.
“I thought for a lot of last year that there was a lot of, I suppose, treatment going on that I thought wasn’t fair.
“Maybe I didn’t do enough, maybe I did – I don’t know. I don’t think much went right last year and I don’t know what that was down to. I suppose everybody has their own opinions but I just think the year was a failure before it kind of even happened. There was stuff going on all the time that really is not supposed to happen on a team.
“Everybody is supposed to be positive and everybody is supposed to be driving each other, exactly the way it’s happening now. When you have fellas training three, four or five times a week, giving it their all, the least they deserve is probably a bit of encouragement,” he added.
Cork won the pre-season Munster senior hurling League recently and Horgan is enthused by the group of young players who he says, under the guidance of new manager Pat Ryan, have re-energised the squad.
“Everyone seems to be re-energised and enthusiastic and ready for the year ahead. We’ve trained hard for a good few weeks now, and it’s going really well. That’s all you can ask of anyone at this time of the year I suppose.
“A lot of them came in. They’re flying. Everyone’s driving on really, and there’s a good blend there really, and everyone’s bouncing off each other, we’re training three times a week, and yeah, we go and give all the effort we can in training.
“We’re enjoying it too, and that’s the most important thing. You can’t train hard without enjoying it.
“We all know the talent that is in our dressing room from the older fellas, the middle-aged and even younger fellas.
“We all just go in and we know that everybody is really skilled, strong and fit, it’s just a case of when you come in you give your all and everybody does that. You can’t ask for any more then.”
That touch down and into his path 🔥
Patrick Horgan is on another levelpic.twitter.com/842Q1nbBLR
— GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) May 19, 2019
Horgan is yet to win a Celtic Cross but he’s still as hungry as ever.
“Obviously the goal is to win an All-Ireland. That’s everyone’s goal.
“Myself, I answer that question in a way that if I was to give it up today, would it be a failure? Would it be something I would be disappointed with – yeah, obviously I would have been freaked out of my head not to win an All-Ireland but at the same time I answered that question in a way that I loved every minute of it.
“I loved being involved with Cork and the amount of players I have played with, and the savage players I have played with, legends of the game like, do you know.
“That’s what I love and I enjoyed all of that, and was all of that a failure? No.”
