DARRAGH Fitzgibbon has rubbished claims from earlier in the Championship that Cork colleague and history chaser Patrick Horgan was ‘finished’, pointing to his body of work since.
Veteran Horgan, arguably the greatest current hurler without an All-Ireland senior medal, is closing in on a couple of significant records this weekend.
Ahead of Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final against Limerick, the Glen Rovers man is 11 points shy of Lee Chin in the 2024 Championship scoring charts.
The bigger picture in terms of the 36-year-old’s remarkable scoring is that with 29-612 from 81 Championship games, he is tied with Kilkenny’s TJ Reid (34-597) at the head of the Championship’s all-time scorers list.
Both players will feature across the weekend as Reid’s Kilkenny will take on Clare in the first semi-final tomorrow.
The pair have had their shaky moments this summer, like Reid missing a string of routine scores in the Leinster games against Carlow, Dublin and Wexford while Horgan failed to score in Cork’s opening round Munster defeat to Waterford.
He has bounced back strongly since, blasting 1-11 in their landmark provincial win over Limerick, and is currently sitting on 5-57 for the Championship, with 3-10 of that coming from play.
“He’s so meticulous in his work, in the way he looks after himself and the way he trains, he just lets people on the outside talk about whatever they’re going to talk about,” said Fitzgibbon of Horgan. “There were people after the Waterford game saying that he was finished and he has answered those critics with the way he’s performing.
“I think it’s a lesson to everyone, the way fellas like TJ and Patrick both look after themselves, and to be performing at their level at 36 years of age is just a credit to them.”
Midfielder Fitzgibbon, the PwC GAA/GPA Hurler of the Month for May, reckons two-time MacCarthy Cup finalist Horgan would swap any of his scoring records for that coveted All-Ireland medal.
“Absolutely, we all would,” said Fitzgibbon, who realises that getting beyond five-in-a-row chasing Limerick to secure their final place will take some doing. “We know the challenge that’s coming and I think that’s one of the things that sets Limerick apart - how they tweak things and answer all the questions that are asked of them in any match. They’ve answered every question thrown at them over the last couple of years.”
Well, not quite every question. Cork did beat them on a memorable night at Pairc Chaoimh in mid-May, a game the Rebels simply had to win after previously coming up short against Waterford and Clare.
It’s that result that has given Cork supporters genuine hope of ending their All-Ireland drought, a winless streak stretching back to 2005.
“I haven’t really experienced anything like that,” said Fitzgibbon of the atmosphere on Leeside that evening. “We experienced more in terms of success with the Munster wins in 2017 and 2018 but I think that night was just, I suppose, a feeling of relief that we could extend our season by another week, and also to show that the things we’d been working on in training were working and to give us confidence to drive on.
“Everyone talks about the scenes after the match. I think that was the crowd expressing an emotional response to what we did on the night.
“At the same time, we knew as players when we got back into the dressing-room that, yeah, we were saying well done to eachother but we knew we had to get back in and get ready for the following week.
“We were in the gym the following morning.”