Stephen McDonnell is asked for his outstanding Patrick Horgan memory. The highlight reel is endless. There’s any amount of artistic works to pick from across their Cork and Glen days together.

McDonnell eschews all of the many obvious scores.

“Just sitting down in the dressing-room and seeing Hoggie there, that was everything,” Cork’s 2017 Munster winning captain begins.

“Sitting down in the Glen dressing-room and seeing Hoggie opposite you, because with the Glen, we were never the best team, we were never the favourites, we were always underdogs. But just knowing Hoggie was there, you knew you had a chance.

“So the second you asked that question, my mind immediately went to sitting in the dressing-room before a big game, Hoggie sitting there, and you are saying, alright lads, we have a chance here. That’s the presence he had.

“His presence and his standards drove the fellas around him, even if he wasn’t directly nurturing others as that’s not his style. He wouldn’t be talking. It was his actions that said to others, this is what it takes.”

Less than a year apart in age, they met on the road very early in life. McDonnell remembers, as kids, how they’d be playing World Cup soccer at one end of the field, at the other was Horgan and his father practising frees.

“He was the ultimate example of what it takes to be the best at what you do. He gave his life to it. He gave everything to it. He was always accountable to himself,” says McDonnell.

“An obsession as he got older was how old can he be while he is still starting. That became a new challenge for him. He looked at the likes of Tom Brady, Ronaldo. He was studying the likes of them.

“The opportunity and the challenge for him now is coming out of that hurling identity and seeing what he wants to do next on his terms.”

John Meyler first worked with a 12-year-old Horgan when coaching the Cork Primary Games team in 2001.

“Ah sure you could see it straight away. You could see how good he was and how good he was going to be,” Meyler reflects last evening.

Eighteen years later, and in what turned out to be Meyler’s last game in charge of the Cork seniors, Horgan posted 3-10 in a phenomenal All-Ireland quarter-final showing against Kilkenny.

“There’s very little instruction you give a guy like him because he has so much talent, so much ability. When you get players like that, it was more or less building the team around him, getting fellas working with him, and providing the ball for him.

“We probably should have given him more ball the day he got the 3-10. Even last Friday night against Midleton in the county quarter-final, he got 1-3 from play. I think people took for granted what he contributed because he was so consistent every day he went out.

“For a 7pm midweek training session at Páirc Uí Chaoimh or Páirc Uí Rinn, he was down there at 5pm practising what you saw on the pitch the following weekend. Nobody saw the practice, the time, or the effort he put in. But yet, it looked so simple then on Sunday when he was playing against Kilkenny or Tipperary.”

The missing All-Ireland medal from his collection won’t define an 18-season career, but may “haunt” him, says Meyler.

“Ultimately, he didn’t get his All-Ireland medal. That will always kind of haunt him, really, in a sense. He deserved one but didn’t get one.

“He’ll forever be regarded as one of Cork’s best ever inside forwards, in the same bracket as Charlie McCarthy, Seánie O’Leary, Jimmy [Barry-Murphy], Joe Deane, Ben O’Connor. Those guys have All-Ireland medals, Hoggie doesn’t have one. That’s the only difference really.”