Former Kilkenny star Brian Hogan on famous Hawk-Eye moment with Tipperary a decade on
'I have no doubt that if Hawk-Eye wasn’t there there’d be Tipp lads still to this day trying to argue the point that it was over.'
It was only that evening that Brian Hogan grasped the magnitude of it all.
He had made the decision before a ball was pucked in 2014 that it would be his last year with Kilkenny. Ideally, it would end with another All-Ireland victory.
It did, and it didn’t.
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In the 70th minute of the All-Ireland final against Tipperary, 10 years ago today, he latched onto a loose Michael Cahill clearance, brushed past Noel McGrath and surged up the middle.
“I remember looking up and seeing a Tipperary jersey and a Kilkenny jersey, I can’t remember who it was, it was more out to my right-hand side at the time,” Hogan recalls.
“The thought was to get the handpass out to my right side to one of the Kilkenny lads and when I looked up again, Padraic Maher had pushed up and my initial instinct was to try and avoid the contact here, try and get around him.
“But the one thing I was convinced about, I couldn’t believe it was a free the other way.”
Maher and Hogan had collided and referee Barry Kelly awarded Tipperary a free, just outside their own 45.
John O’Dwyer came back to strike it and comfortably made the distance but the umpire couldn’t be sure which side of the post it went. Hawk-Eye, just a year after its introduction, famously intervened. Just wide.
With that, the game was over. Replay.
“I have no doubt that if Hawk-Eye wasn’t there there’d be Tipp lads still to this day trying to argue the point that it was over.
“The full enormity of it didn’t hit home until after that match when I’m sitting there thinking I gave away the free, whether I gave it away or not, for Tipp to have a puck to potentially win the All-Ireland.
“That could have been it because I knew it was my last year and that could have been my last contribution.
“After the match and then when people come up to you going, ‘Jaysus, thank God for Hawk-Eye’ and you’re like ‘Yeah, Jesus, yeah, thank God for it, yeah.’ Then you’re like, ‘F**k like, thank God is right.’”
It would have been a cruel end to a distinguished career had the concession of a winning free in an All-Ireland final been his final act as a Kilkenny player. But, as things turned out, that run and concession of that free, whether justified or not, was his last play as a county hurler.
Hogan had been Brian Cody’s first choice centre-back when fit since pushing John Tennyson out of the team in 2007 but had a difficult time with injury in his final year before working his way back into the team once again.
Problems with his back resurfaced before the final, however, and hampered his training. By his own admission, he didn’t perform particularly well and the game had been played on Tipperary’s terms to a degree that Cody couldn’t stomach.
There would be changes for the replay. Out went Walter Walsh, Joey Holden and Hogan; in came John Power, Padraig Walsh and Kieran Joyce.
The drawn game was a free-wheeling encounter; the replay was rather different. This time Kilkenny held the whip hand and won more comfortably than the final 2-17 to 2-14 margin suggests.
Hogan had won a seventh All-Ireland but didn’t get off the bench. For that, the medal weighs that little bit lighter than the others.
“Yeah, it does, yeah, to be honest. It was an incredibly tough time, I suppose. I missed the 2010 All-Ireland through injury. That was very different in terms of emotion.
“I was just a bit off [in the drawn game], certainly in the first half. I came into it in the second half and got on a lot more ball. Felt I was finishing stronger.
“We as a team didn’t perform as we would have wanted. That was spoken about in the following weeks. We went back up to Carton House and we knew, you could sense it in the training sessions, they went up another level or two. We weren’t going to be beaten in the replay and, obviously as part of that, Brian made a few changes to the team and I lost out.
“I could see it in the training sessions, the match games, I knew I was on the chopping block. And, to be fair, as much and all as it pains me to say it, Brian was right and Joycey went out, Joycey had a man of the match performance that day and was outstanding.
“You’re totally there in terms of wanting to beat Tipp and get another All-Ireland but, yeah, obviously on a personal level there is a definite sense of disappointment personally.
“I obviously did contribute to All-Irelands previously, I know what it feels like.”
He followed through on his decision to retire but admits that he “can’t say for definite if things had gone the other way and they had won by a point and it had been that free, whether that could have changed my mind”.
Now managing his club, O’Loughlin Gaels, there is a certain irony in the fact that the lack of score detection technology for goal incidents meant that his side was denied a goal in last January’s All-Ireland final, which they subsequently lost by a point to St Thomas’s.
“It’s not even highly advanced technology, it’s very basic stuff to tell whether something is over the line.
“I’m not in favour of technology for things that are subjective, where you could be open for debate. You don’t want it like VAR in soccer.
“It’s either over the line or it’s not. It’s either between the posts or it’s not.”
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