‘IT WAS ALL WORTH IT... EVERY BIT OF IT’
Kilkenny hurler Richie Hogan was a force of nature — until injuries took their toll
‘SURE I’d love to keep going, but I can’t.’ Before Richie Hogan runs through the punishment his body has taken, and why he simply had to call time on his Kilkenny senior hurling career after a 17season run that encompassed seven All-Ireland medals, 12 Leinster titles, five National Hurling League medals and four All-Stars Awards, it’s worth recalling his legacy on the field.
When he came first, he was the feted St Kieran’s star. The underage prodigy who might have only been 5ft7in in height but who had a strike that could lift the roof of a net. From inside finisher, he developed his game during the Brian Cody years to become a very different player altogether.
When he was feted as Hurler of the Year in 2014, it was off the back of a Man of the Match display in a classic drawn final against Tipperary when he was in a free role that saw him drift between centre-forward and midfield to devastating effect. Here he was, using all of his game intelligence and bag of tricks
‘DEEP DOWN, I KNEW THAT I JUST WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO MAKE IT’
and flicks to link the play, pinging over points from distance or showcasing that remarkable spring to pluck balls from the sky.
That’s why he says, ‘If I was to judge my 17 years career as a whole, you’d have to be incredibly happy,’ even if it’s hard for any Kilkenny supporter to get the head around the fact that it’s 2015 since the county’s last All-Ireland success. ‘If it was flipped on its head, and if I had won nothing in my first seven but loads for the last 10, you’d say it was an incredible success but in reality it’s the same thing. Like Stephen Cluxton didn’t win any All-Ireland until he was 30 maybe. And he’s the most successful player to ever play the game.
‘If you flipped his career around and he won nothing for the last 10, would he be disappointed? I don’t know. So I’m looking at it as a whole. And given what was thrown at me, I think I dealt with it well.’
What was thrown at him this season alone gives an insight into what he was putting his body through and why, at 35, the Danesfort player had to let go. ‘Last year was a disaster for me off the pitch in terms of… I was selected for a few games and I had to pull out the night before. That sort of stuff.
‘I played against Cork in the National League semi-final and was playing well and I broke my arm in the middle of the game. If it wasn’t for that, I would have played in a League final and could have had the opportunity to play well.
‘And then you’re looking forward to Leinster. Whereas I came out that day and I was like, “Jesus what am I going to do now to try and get another chance later in the season”?
‘So that was difficult. I was supposed to be in for the Leinster final on the panel and I had to pull out literally the night before with a back injury. I was to play another League game where I was selected to play against Waterford and I had to pull out the night before.’
He tells a story behind his Leinster final pull-out that speaks to back problems he has to live with on a daily basis and that forced him to ring manager Derek Lyng.
‘The Leinster final specifically, I was going really, really well. I’d come on against Antrim and got a few weeks of training behind me since then. It was the Friday night training session. I had driven down from Dublin and had stopped to get something to eat. As I was getting out of the car, I hurt my back and I was completely crippled.
‘I wouldn’t have been able to move. I wouldn’t have been able to stand. I was completely twisted. So I spent a couple of hours on the physio table, took a bit of medication, a few painkillers to kind of release a bit of pain. But this had happened to me before. I was there literally just trying not to seize up.
‘But deep down I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it. So I took a bit of a rest that night. Woke up the following morning and just had to ring Derek and say, “I’m out”.
‘Those ones are particularly hard to take. I wasn’t even at the game. I couldn’t even go to the game. I was watching it on TV. So that was particularly difficult.’
That was the final another old soldier, Cillian Buckley, came off the bench to strike an incredible matchwinning goal right at the death.
Hogan’s (right) own injury problems are down to ‘an awful lot of wear and tear in my lower back’, the legacy of playing ‘a huge amount of sport in my teenage years’.
To the point now where he says, ‘I need some sort of procedure on my back at some point. Nothing incredibly major. But the reality was it wasn’t going to get better.
And I saw every specialist under the sun. The last time I went to a specialist, it was very much he reassuring me I was doing absolutely everything I could possibly do and I was doing it right But that if I got the surgery that I need, that would be hurling over.
‘It was enough to keep going, for sure. And like, I’m fine now and I’ll be fine.
‘Maybe it might come at me in five or 10 years. I have a couple of facet joints that are completely worn down. The joints need to be fused together. They grate off each and that causes back spasms.
‘So it’s not something that can be fixed. It’s something that can be sorted with spinal fusion, but you don’t play then.
‘That was kind of the choice. Mornings after matches and training sessions… like, they were horrendous. But for me, it was just actually routine. That’s kind of it. But it was all worth it for sure. Every bit of it.’