They’ve got a fresh vacancy for an iconic forward in Cork. Brian Hayes, one the county’s latest All Stars, may yet fill the void left by Patrick Horgan. Or perhaps it’ll be Alan Connolly.
Few players, in Cork or beyond, possess the same potential to excite as the 24-year-old Blackrock clubman.
In five seasons as a Cork senior hurler, Connolly has scored 24 goals in 41 league and championship games, a neat dozen goals in each competition.
There are four competitive hat-tricks in there too, the latest registered against Dublin in this year’s All-Ireland semi-final, in addition to three games in which he netted twice.
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That’s Hoggy-esque scoring. Though rewind a couple of years and Connolly wasn’t so sure he’d even get a proper run at it. Shoulder surgery and then hamstring trouble cost him the entire 2023 season and when he eventually returned in March 2024, he spoke of the ‘dark place’ from which he’d just emerged.
“I probably haven’t been fit for the past three years,” he acknowledged at the time.
He started all 15 of Cork’s championship games since then across 2024 and 2025, winning a Munster medal this season and lining out in two All-Ireland finals. The journey will continue when preseason training resumes shortly under new manager Ben O’Connor.
“I can’t wait to get back,” said Connolly at an event to promote Blackrock’s car raffle fundraiser. “It’s relentless obviously, but I’ve had about four to six weeks off now since the Midleton game in the semi-finals of the club so I’m itching to get back.”
The Cork players weren’t agitating to get rid of former manager Pat Ryan, far from it, but recognise too that O’Connor is a safe pair of hands.
“We would have been happy for Pat to stay on but to have someone of Ben’s calibre coming in is probably the next best thing,” said Connolly. “So I know we will be fine with Ben. I think a lot of the younger lads played under him on Cork under-20 teams. I didn’t, but I have only heard positive things about him.”
Horgan’s departure has also created an opportunity for a new free-taker to emerge. Declan Dalton shared the duties this year though Connolly is also an option.
“I take them with Blackrock, I’m comfortable taking them,” he said. “If I have to take them, I’ll take them, but that’s something we’ll think about in a few months’ time.”
If Connolly really does aspire to step into Horgan’s shoes, he will need to chase vital consistency. The 3-1 he scored against Tipperary in the Munster Championship last year was followed by two scoreless games in which he was substituted. And, by Connolly’s standards, his performances in the 2024 and 2025 All-Ireland finals failed to hit the highs of which he is capable.
But it’s all part of the learning curve for a player who wasn’t always sure his senior career would pan out.
“Yeah, of course,” he agreed. “It was obviously tough because I got surgery on my shoulder and then when I came back, I did a grade-four tear on my hamstring.”
There was also an ankle issue which took a chunk out of his 2025 league campaign.
“I had a kind of bursitis, or tendinitis, in my ankle,” he said. “It kind of flared up. It just needed a few weeks off.”
The road to iconic status is rarely straightforward. Just ask Horgan, who was dropped in 2022, the same season Connolly made his full championship debut.
Horgan never got his All-Ireland medal in the end, but Connolly has time on his side and has already started processing the lessons from this year’s final defeat to Tipperary.
“I’ve watched it back personally, yeah,” he said of the decider, where Cork let a six-point half-time lead end in a 15-point defeat. “It’s a hard watch all right, but it has to be done.”
He doesn’t agree that Tipp outfoxed them by deploying a sweeper, stifling an attack that had struck 7-26 against Dublin in the semi-final.
“We kind of had an idea they would play with a sweeper,” said Connolly. “I don’t think it was tactically that they won, it was more that they wanted it more. They were relentless in their tackling, they just went after us.”
*Alan Connolly was speaking to promote Blackrock Hurling Club’s car raffle fundraiser in association with Cogans Toyota.
