'I'm not aiming 17 years towards a day' - Patrick Horgan keeping things in perspective

Patrick Horgan is a hurling obsessive with an insatiable appetite for improvement.

The fixation is so intense that he sometimes will tune out of conversations and wander off if he's visualising an on-field scenario. His friends know the score.

When he goes training, if he sees a team-mate doing a new move, he’d be "freaking out" until he perfects it.

His enjoyment of those sessions runs so deep that beating Limerick wasn’t the big prize from their All-Ireland semi-final. It was being back at training the next night with the boys. Anything to prolong the adventure.

At 36, the Glen star is faster and fitter than ever. He also knows better when to take a break.

He was guilty of overtraining in his younger days to the extent that he was barred from his county and club pitches for a time.

"Early on, I definitely did too much. When I started playing with Cork, my touch seemed perfect but I was here on the pitch at 5 o’clock and we’d be training at 7.

"We’d have a two-hour session so I’d be on the field for four hours and you’d be worn out.

"It was just skill and touch and there’s so much more goes on in a game. When you realise that, your training routine changes, 100%.

"I wasn’t listening but I was barred from the pitch and everything for a while. They wouldn’t open the gates.

"Remember the old Páirc, the two big red gates? They’d be closed. Not a hope were we going out. Paudie Sull was the same. (I was) barred out of the Glen field as well.

"Then the game started changing and we started thinking differently about the game. Training routines then changed. It’s not all about the time you put in, it’s the quality time."

In his 17th year as a Cork senior, he’s enjoying his hurling more than ever before.

"I have this thing where I just have