Patrick Horgan is a hurling obsessive with an insatiable appetite for improvement.
The fixation is so intense that he sometimes will tune out of conversations and wander off if he's visualising an on-field scenario. His friends know the score.
When he goes training, if he sees a team-mate doing a new move, he’d be "freaking out" until he perfects it.
His enjoyment of those sessions runs so deep that beating Limerick wasn’t the big prize from their All-Ireland semi-final. It was being back at training the next night with the boys. Anything to prolong the adventure.
At 36, the Glen star is faster and fitter than ever. He also knows better when to take a break.
He was guilty of overtraining in his younger days to the extent that he was barred from his county and club pitches for a time.
"Early on, I definitely did too much," he says.
"When I started playing with Cork, my touch seemed perfect but I was here on the pitch at 5 o’clock and we’d be training at 7.
"We’d have a two-hour session so I’d be on the field for four hours and you’d be worn out.
"It was just skill and touch and there’s so much more goes on in a game. When you realise that, your training routine changes, 100%.
"I wasn’t listening but I was barred from the pitch and everything for a while. They wouldn’t open the gates.
"Remember the old Páirc, the two big red gates? They’d be closed. Not a hope were we going out. Paudie Sull was the same. (I was) barred out of the Glen field as well.
"Then the game started changing and we started thinking differently about the game. Training routines then changed. It’s not all about the time you put in, it’s the quality time."
In his 17th year as a Cork senior, he’s enjoying his hurling more than ever before.
"I have this thing where I just have to try to get better all the time," he says.
"It’s weird and if you lose that, you’ll just freefall. I’d be annoyed if I couldn’t do something or try to do something.
"When we train, you’d see a lot of players doing a certain move or strike and then every fella is over trying to do it. You’d be freaking out if you can’t do it. The hunger to be better is just really strong.
"If I didn’t love it as much as I did, I wouldn’t play at all. There’d be no reason to.
"Even to win the Limerick game for me wasn’t the reward of the match at all, it was like we’ll get a training session Tuesday now back with the boys.
"We’ll all be down together because we get on really well and we’d meet a lot outside of training. To keep that together was nearly more of an incentive than the next match."
How is Horgan getting quicker as he ticks past his mid-30s? It’s a question he struggles to answer himself.
"I actually don’t know," he replies.
"It’s a good question. When you talk about trying to get better, instead of going down the road of getting really fit every year, it’s specific training where maybe you don’t have to run so long and sharpen up.
"The weights you lift are more explosive. Twitching fast, that’s what I’ve been thinking anyway. And a bit of hunger for the game as well to just run through things, sprint as hard as you can."
The narrative may be about getting Hoggie his Celtic Cross but he doesn’t see it that way. Just as he doesn’t think about the three points needed to claim the all-time scoring record over TJ Reid to end the season.
He says: "Honestly, and I'm not saying it because I'm in the position, but it's actually not even close to that for me. I'm not aiming 17 years towards a day.
"That doesn't mean I haven't had good times. The amount of stories you have from matchdays going down through the years and training and 17 years of my life has been coming here, hanging out with the boys. New fellas coming in, getting to know them, becoming great friends with them. That means a lot to me.
"It'd be unbelievable if we could get across the line but it can't be just about that. In your hurling career, everybody wants to have it and I’m no different. But I'd look over a long time: Did I enjoy it or didn't enjoy it? And I did."
It looked like he’d landed the winning point in the drawn final against Clare in 2013 until Domhnall O'Donovan’s improbable equaliser. When he looks back on that day, he can only conclude it was destined to be a draw due to the series of breaks that fell for the Banner in that final play.
"It was disappointing at the time," he recalls.
"Probably should’ve got over the line, didn’t, whatever. Probably stung for a while after but after that, it was a case of back to this is what you love doing.
"You can think of that and it’ll affect you going forward or else try and forget about it and improve."
Given his lifelong love for playing the game, Horgan is asked how he will cope when he eventually hangs up the boots.
He says: "It's a really hard thing for anyone to do. It's going to be really hard for me. Seventeen years is a long time and even before the 17 years, you're still nearly putting in as much time for the previous six or seven because you're trying to get to here.
"When it does come time where I need to stop playing, I was so lucky. So it should be easy for me to give it up, have a few pucks around. But let's see.
"If I feel like I can't contribute to training, contribute to the team, well then there's plenty of young fellas there that can. That's how I see it."
Watch the All-Ireland Hurling Championship final, Cork v Clare, on Sunday from 2.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to commentary on RTÉ Radio 1
