Absence makes heart grow fonder

Brian Corcoran

Club: Erin's Own.

Age: 26.

Height: 6' 2"

Occupation: Computer analyst.

Honours: 3 Munster SFC medals, 2 Munster SHC medals, 1 All-Ireland MFC medal, 2 NHL medals, 1 All-Ireland FC medal, 1 Rai1way Cup medal, 1 Oireachtas medal, Hurler of the year 1992.

Brian Corcoran stands in the dusk and dismisses the past seven years as if they've been a bad dream. Hard to articulate what happened. When this decade was young, tales of Cork were splashed over news pages most every summer and Brian Corcoran was the star name on everyone's lips, this teenage phenomenon with boulders for shoulders and impeccable balance. A dual athlete, footballer and hurler, a natural.

He was the chosen hurler of '92, and as Cork rode up through the midlands to play Kilkenny in the All-Ireland final the world seemed to unfurl itself before him as unyieldingly as the road. He was the new sensation in a team full of names long since sequined in greatness. There seemed to be no end to the good times. Then Kilkenny, wily and wizened, stung them for 3-10 (to 1-12) and what had seemed solid caved in beneath him.

"It kind of finished up being an empty year," he says, quietly. "You know, I'd have swapped every honour for an All-Ireland medal. It is just about winning and that's why we have to take this chance. Could be another seven years before Cork reach a final again."

His perspectives have changed now. He is a married man and the undisputed sage on the team, held in reverence by the younger defenders even as he looked up to Denis Walsh and Tom Cashman seven autumns past. And as for the dual dream, he gave up on the chase after struggling in last year's Munster final against Kerry.

"I hadn't played a lot of football in the build-up to the game and found you just can't hope to play well and mark someone that has been playing football day in, day out. I was downhearted that day and decided I didn't want to make a fool of myself again."

So he could but look on wryly as Larry Tompkins's Cork team drove inexorably on, with Sean Og O'hAilpin embracing the dual demands with the same wide-eyed enthusiasm Corcoran had once known.

"The way the footballers are going now, I don't think I'd get in the side anyhow, so there probably isn't much loss. Sean is only 22, you can afford to do it then."

When Clare broke free midway through the decade, it seemed to students of the Cork game that Corcoran was a man born out of his time. Brilliance swinging vainly in the midst of impoverishment.

Cork won the National Football League title in 1993 but were silenced by Clare in that year's Munster semi-final. The old school gradually slipped away, with talent slow in coming through. In 1996 arrived the blackest hour; Corcoran at midfield and Jimmy Barry on the line as Limerick ran them ragged in the old tomb by the Lee. For southern traditionalists, it was an inconceivable sight.

"Things got bleak for a while. But I felt there was a way forward with the young lads coming through at minor and under-21. A lot of these lads won underage titles the way I used lose them. They learned how to really hate losing. That's paying off now." The Saturday before the All-Ireland semi-final against Offaly, the team took a stroll around Croke Park. "Just to get the younger lads accustomed to it, so they could see it was only a field with goalposts at the end of the day. It was new to some of them but it seemed like a fair while since I hurled on it myself."

Around him, his younger colleagues are talking in that inimitable Cork style, a torrent of supersonic syllables, excitedly and confidently. It was an impetuosity he knew himself once, before Cork hurling went into freefall and he was sent flailing with it.

But he's still here, a great survivor, eager to stress his point.

"This Sunday, it's all about winning," he explains, "because you never know . . ."