When Cork beat Offaly in the centenary All-Ireland hurling final of 1984, Padraig Horan figured he’d had enough and retired.<\/p>\n
He was 34 at that stage and by way of making it official handed a letter in to Offaly hurling secretary Tony Murphy outlining his situation. Thanks for the memories and all of that.<\/p>\n
Word reached Pat Carroll, a team-mate of Horan’s, later that day and he drove up immediately to the school Horan was teaching in and urged him to reconsider.<\/p>\n
Horan recalled the conversation in an interview with the Irish Daily Mirror’s Pat Nolan in 2020.<\/p>\n
“Pat Carroll arrived and he said to me, ‘I hear rumours that you have retired?’ I said, ‘I have, I gave a letter to Tony Murphy this morning’,” remembered Horan.<\/p>\n
“He said, ‘Don’t be acting the fucking eejit, we’ll win the All-Ireland next year and you’ll be up there with us’. I went out and got the letter back from Murphy.”<\/p>\n
Offaly did win the All-Ireland in 1985 too, and Horan finished that year by collecting his first All-Star award.<\/p>\n
It was only after the 1986 Leinster final loss to Kilkenny that he actually retired for good.<\/p>\n
It’s exactly 40 years and one month since that provincial final defeat, the last of Horan’s 151 League and Championship appearances for the Faithful.<\/p>\n
He passed away yesterday at the age of 76 having battled Parkinson’s Disease in recent years.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, he was the subject of a Laochra Gael episode on TG4 which documented his remarkable career.<\/p>\n
He was captain of the first Offaly team to win a Leinster title, in 1980, and skipper of the first Offaly team to win an All-Ireland in 1981.<\/p>\n
The 1980 win, a provincial title won against the head when Offaly beat Kilkenny in front of less than 10,000, was tinged with despair.<\/p>\n
Horan’s father, Tommy, passed away at his home while listening to the closing stages of the game.<\/p>\n
He was in his car listening to commentary on the radio and shouted in to a housed packed with family members and grandchildren, ‘They have it won! They have it won!’<\/p>\n
Shortly after, one of the grandchildren, unaware that Tommy had passed away, reported that he was ‘asleep in the car’.<\/p>\n
Padraig’s Offaly colleague, Damien Martin, broke the news to him shortly after the game in Croke Park.<\/p>\n
He said it was a regret that he never got to hand the cups for the Leinster and All-Ireland wins over to his hurling obsessed father but acknowledged too ‘the happiness around the place compensated for that’.<\/p>\n
Renowned as a fearsome operator on the pitch, former Offaly player Daith\u00ed Regan recounted a story of playing club hurling for Birr when they were managed by Horan.<\/p>\n
It was in the run up to the 1994 Leinster club SHC final replay with Oulart-The Ballagh. Regan had a badly broken finger and, as he couldn’t grip the hurley, reasoned that he couldn’t play, turning up for the game without his gear.<\/p>\n
“I told him (Horan) I couldn’t swing the hurley and he said I could swing one-handed – they could put me in full-forward,” said Regan who, after receiving an injection into his finger and having the hurley strapped to his hand, started as usual.<\/p>\n
Birr won the replay and went on to win the All-Ireland.<\/p>\n
As a player, Horan back loaded his successes with Offaly, winning his two All-Ireland SHC medals and four Leinster medals at the tail end of his career, between 1980 and 1985.<\/p>\n
He was a dual underage talent in the county and also played competitively, if briefly, for the Offaly senior footballers.<\/p>\n
His 11 club SHC medals with St Rynagh’s were spread out over almost 20 years between 1968 and 1987 and he participated in the very first All-Ireland club final with them, in 1971.<\/p>\n
He was centre-back on that team but by the time he lifted the MacCarthy Cup a decade later, was operating as a full-forward with Offaly.<\/p>\n
Horan also managed his club and county’s seniors teams, as well as the St Brendan’s Community School in Birr, where he worked, winning an All-Ireland colleges title with them in 1986. He had a spell in charge of Laois and later the Offaly U-21s. He was inducted into both the Offaly and the GAA Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Horan is survived by his wife, Carmel, and four children, Niamh, Shane, Cathal and Diarmuid. His Funeral Mass will take place on Saturday morning at 11am in St Rynagh’s Church, Banagher with burial afterwards in St Rynagh’s cemetery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Cork beat Offaly in the centenary All-Ireland hurling final of 1984, Padraig Horan figured he’d had enough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,129,19,17,132],"class_list":["post-633510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-eire","tag-hurling","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117083575766971759","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}