REBEL ROUSER
More than 10 years after his breakthrough, Conor Lehane is still main man for Midleton — and can be for Cork again
IT may be Cork’s little All-Ireland, but it is Conor Lehane’s big stage. This afternoon he could be confused for believing that time has frozen still, as his Midleton side face Sarsfields in the county final at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, just like they did 10 years ago. If it rolls the same way this time neither Lehane nor Midleton will complain.
Back then, they had not won a county title in 22 years and had grown weary of looking back to a time when they were kings of Cork hurling, winning four senior championships in eight years in a glory run enabled by iconic figures like Ger Fitzgerald, Kevin Hennessy and, of course, the great John Fenton, who is currently their chairman.
They needed new heroes to hang their hats on and in Lehane they found one who literally leapt from the cradle.
He was still only 20 when he shouldered the burden of ending that title famine and the manner in which he did so was staggering.
As Midleton edged the final over their East Cork rivals on a 2-15 to 2-13 scoreline, Lehane racked up an astonishing 2-10, with 2-8 coming from play.
Midleton had the 2-8 on the board by half-time, with all but one point sourced from Lehane’s stick in a performance ranked by many as one of the best individual performances in the modest history of the Cork county finals.
It was one that invited comparison when Erin’s Own unleashed a teenager on Na Piarsaigh in the 1992 decider, and 19year-old Brian Corcoran hit them for 10 points on the way to carrying them to their first county title. When that is the rarified company you end up keeping, suffice to say that you have got game and Conor Lehane has. Except? Except 10 years on, the world that was once at his feet seems a little further away.
Coming into that 2013 final, he was coming off a season where he played in two epic All-Ireland finals, scoring a sublime goal in the drawn final against Clare, but he has not played in one since.
It would be easy to find those who would argue that he has not delivered on all that potential and class – the kind that saw him make his debut as a Cork senior hurler at the age of 18 when he was sitting his Leaving Certificate in 2011 – but it would be even easier to argue that Cork’s fragility over the past decade hardly gave him the stage to do so.
But Midleton? Well, that’s been different.
In 2021, when it appeared that Kieran Kingston had lost faith in Lehane and cut him from his squad, Lehane’s response was to remind everyone just how good he was by lighting up the domestic stage just like he had eight years earlier.
He would hit 13 points against Pat Horgan’s Glen Rovers in the final, five coming from open play in yet another blistering first half capped by an audacious overhead pass just before the interval to set up Ross O’Regan for a point.
When it was done, he walked out of Páirc Uí Chaoimh with his hands full again, a second man of the match award in a final and this time holding the Seán Óg Murphy canister as team captain. Midleton’s coach Ben O’Connor, could not resist the open goal which the Cork senior hurling management had presented by dropping his team’s leader. ‘You saw there again today when the pressure was on, who was the out man?’ asked O’Connor rhetorically afterwards. ‘Ball down to Conor and Conor would win it. Look, if there’s eight or nine better forwards than him in the county, we don’t know anything about hurling,’ added O’Connor, who evidently knows enough about hurling to be Cork’s current under-20 boss. There was enough in that to see Lehane return to the Cork team the following season, where he offered another blinding reminder of his talent in nailing seven points from play – six in the first half against Tipperary – in a must-win final round Munster championship game.
However, in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Galway, he was benched at half-time having missed three dead ball attempts and was replaced by Horgan.
This summer, he appeared in all four of Cork’s Munster Championship games, but started just two and his total summer haul yielded just three points.
Inevitably, his intercounty future will come up for discussion again but at 31, he has hardly run out of time. Or out of legs either.
He has shown that already on the way to tomorrow’s decider. There are others around him that can shoulder the weight now, not least Paul Haughney and Luke O’Farrell – who are the only two Midleton survivors from that final a decade ago – along with current county panelists Tommy O’Connell and Cormac Beausang. Yet they would have not reached the final without their main man.
Having sustained an injury in a second round group win over Glen Rovers, he missed the final round group clash with Blackrock. He returned for the crunch semi-final meeting with defending champions St Finbarr’s and in a tight game, he showed them the way with a couple of points from play before his raking delivery late in the game set-up Beausang’s match-winning goal.
Ger Fitzgerald, Lehane’s county title winning manager in 2021, was not in the least surprised.
‘He was excellent against the ‘Barr’s, particularly in the second half when he got some excellent scores from play and a few from frees. He was instrumental in that win, when the need was greatest he stood tall but then that is who he is. He is always there for us, a massive player for Midleton.
‘What he never gets enough credit for actually is his leadership of the group, he is a great leader, he is great with young players, he is a great role model. When he is present at training everything goes up a couple of notches,’ says Fitzgerald.
He is mentally strong as well. It may be more than a coincidence that his two defining seasons as a county medal winner with Midleton have come straight off the back of disappointments at intercounty level – the heartbreak of losing an All-Ireland final and the indignity of not making the cut with the county two years ago.
‘Look, he has a very strong personality. He is able to cope with the rough and tumble of sport and that is an important factor to have in any player, especially with one that has his kind of leadership qualities,’ explains Fitzgerald.
Coming off the back of an underwhelming intercounty season, there might be enough in that to spook Sarsfields, not least the likes of Craig Leahy, Conor O’Sullivan and Daniel Kearney, who all saw Lehane up close and personal 10 years ago.
And enough too to remind Cork manager Pat Ryan that Lehane’s story is far from finished telling. ‘He looks after himself very well, in terms of how he trains and prepares,’ explains Fitzgerald.
‘He is only 31 and people sometimes forget that probably because he has been around for so long. ‘I think there is as much out there for him as he wants. In fact, There is loads left if he wants it.’
When he is there at training, everything goes up a couple of notches