‘Speaking Irish is my first natural preference’, Cork hurling star Seán Óg Ó hAilpín has always declared.

‘As much as Gaelic games, Irish dancing and traditional music are part of our culture, the language is as well’, Seán Óg said. ‘I think it’s great. Any chance I get, I speak it.’

Ó hAilpín revealed he enjoys the moments before big matches when Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh drops into the dressing room for a last minute check on the lineout. The two of them always chat in Irish and the hurler often enquires what the pitch is like and what type of studs he should wear.

Ó hAilpín’s love of Irish was one of the main reasons he moved to Dublin to study rather than opting for the Lee-side hurling powerhouse of UCC. DCU offers a course in Finance taught through Irish: ‘I wanted to continue my studies through Irish because I’d studied hard to learn it and I didn’t want to give it up that easily. So, the chance to enhance that for a further four years was a big influence on me going to Dublin’.

He has no doubt his four years in DCU were ‘the greatest’. It was his first time away from home and away from Cork. In his time there, DCU got to the Fitzgibbon final in 1998. He has great memories of that time and is still good friends with a lot of people he met and played with. He says: ‘DCU wasn’t noted as a strong hurling college but, whenever we meet up, we remember the good and bad times’.

Ó hAilpín’s victory speech after Cork won the Liam McCarthy Cup in 2005 is regarded as one of the very best captain’s speeches delivered in Croke Park. He recalls: ’Ní raibh aon rogha agam ach an óráid a rá as Gaeilge. I always knew that if we got to the final there was a 50/50 chance that either myself or the Galway captain Liam O’Donoghue would be going up for the presentation. After doing my secondary school through Irish and my degree through Irish, there was only one language to use. I suppose there is no better day or no better platform than all Ireland final day – with all things Irish.’

Since then, the Cork star has received a lot of positive feedback for his speech: ‘What’s great for me is that a lot of people - agus níl mórán Gaeilge acu - come up to me and they say a few words of Irish, even if that’s all they have.’ Ó hAilpín’s response always is that a little is better than no Irish at all. He says: ‘People make the effort and if my speech achieved anything it’s that the people who would have been shy about speaking Irish get out there and speak the cúpla focal, which is great.’

In 1988, Seán Óg Ó hAilpín was ten years old when he landed into what he recalls as ‘a dull and miserable Cork in the month of February’. He grew up in Sydney, Australia. In Ó Muircheartaigh’s memorable words ‘His father from Fermanagh, his mother from Fiji … neither a hurling stronghold…’.

Seán Óg's story – his excellence at our native games (for he is a fine footballer as well) and his proud adherence to our language and culture – are not only an inspiration to the rest of us but to the tens of thousands of people originally from overseas who now live here.

Seán Óg... ag snámh as Gaeilge...