Richie Hogan on Cork 'gimmicks' and Clare Christmas sessions: 'We thought, aren't these lads some idiots.'

Irish Examiner

24-04-2025

In Kilkenny, it was all about the fundamentals. Anything outside of that was deemed a 'gimmick'. They saw gimmicks in Cork and Clare, according to seven-time All-Ireland winner Richie Hogan.
The four-time All-Star retired in 2023, having made his championship debut in 2008. Speaking on GAA+'s Ratified show, Hogan explained how Kilkenny valued the basics above all else.
'We had virtually no video analysis up until a couple of years ago,' he said. 'Clare wore GPS trackers in 2016 against us in the league semi-final - they hammered us. Not that we would turn our noses up at all of that; we almost saw everything outside of the basics as almost permission to have an excuse.'
That is why they did not opt for closed training sessions or dummy teams. Brian Cody had his own core beliefs.
'We had no coach. His line was always, 'If you are an intercounty hurler and you need to be coached, you are not good enough to be here.' That is the way he would address it. It has changed since. The first designated coach that came in during my time was in 2021.'
This is how it was. The game has changed since. But Kilkenny had their own code. Hogan pointed to a number of examples of what he deemed 'gimmicks'. Donal Óg Cusack and his contact lens. Clare training on Christmas. The Dublin footballers of the mid-2000s.
'We thought they were the England footballers, the showmanship, the craic that goes on around it, we would have been completely against that.
'From a Cork perspective, the more they came out with their little gadgets, the contact lens in their eyes, one day they came out where everyone was wearing the same colour helmets so the opposition would be confused, the more we saw that, the more we loved.
'Changing the ball, we were like, 'these lads think they can focus on the one percent, but they are forgetting the 90%.' I remember a huge motivating factor for us, in 2013, Clare won the All-Ireland.
'They did brilliant to win it but then they brought out this documentary at the end of that year with this video of Tony Kelly running through some woods on Christmas Day at two in the morning. Davy Fitz was behind him with the lights. This was their thing.
'We are training on Christmas Day. No one else is. We were seeing that, and thought, 'Aren't these lads some idiots.'
'They think, just because you train on Christmas day, you are going to win an All-Ireland. That would motivate us even more. We wouldn't go near… We know when down time is. We know when we started training, we'd do it properly from start to finish. We were never into the gimmicks. We saw that as a gimmick. There's no need to train on Christmas day. You get nothing out of it.'
The full episode of Ratified is available here