Wheel turns for 17 years and still in Hoggie we trust

8 September 2013.

That point.

No. Not that one.

The one before it.

Seconds left on the clock, Hoggie under pressure, running away from goal, over the shoulder… over the bar. A score to grace any occasion. A score worthy of winning any final.

What happened afterwards is well known. Not just what happened three minutes later, or three weeks later, but what has happened in various ways every year since to Cork hurling and Patrick Horgan.

Horgan played his first match for the Cork senior hurlers in early 2008. He was still a teenager. They were fractious times. The second strike had ended but there was bad blood and few bandages in Cork GAA circles. The focus was not on hurling.

Still. The future must have looked bright to a young lad from the Glen. Cork had contested four of the previous five All-Ireland finals, winning two. They had three in the bag from the past nine years. With 30 All-Irelands they were still top of the roll of honour – albeit jointly now - with Kilkenny. A talented 19 year old from Cork wouldn't have been considered cocky to have presumed he’d win a few.

By the time 2013 came around it was already clear that things could no longer be taken for granted. The Cody army had battered most opposition and what uprisings Kilkenny couldn’t quell weren’t coming from the Rebel County. The arrog….confident old credo of "We are Cork" more of a threadbare blanket than a rallying cry in the modern era.

2013 was an aberration. Two proud counties battling each other almost to a standstill. But history would show that it was, at most, a middleweight fight. In a non-Olympic year the heavyweights took the year off. Clare haven’t been back since. Cork once, but in retrospect they would maybe prefer if they hadn’t.

So what of the