Off The Ball are down in Cork's Crane Lane tonight for our latest Roadshow in association with Liberty Insurance.
The lads will be joined by a veritable Mount Rushmore of uber-successful Corkonian sportspeople on tonight's show and in many ways it really hits home how the Rebel County has managed to carve a significant place for itself on the global sporting edifice.
Let's not forget that the county has been the source of many of the great intercounty hurlers and footballers of all-time from Christy Ring to Sean Og O'Hailpin and Billy Morgan to Jimmy Barry Murphy.
In the process 12 Hurler of the Year awards and a further three Footballer of the Year gongs have been brought down south over the years.
And on an international scale Cork has racked up plenty of major individual honours and records when it comes to its athletes exploits...
Track and Field
Derval O'Rourke will be joining the lads on tonight's show, just weeks after announcing her retirement from athletics. Her decision brought the curtain down on a successful career which saw the 33-year-old win World Indoor Gold in 2006 as well as numerous silver and bronze medals at European Championships.
And of course there is Sonia O'Sullivan who joined us on our last appearance in Cork. From World Championship gold at Gothenburg in 1995 and three European Championship wins to Olympic silver in Sydney's 5000 metres and Cross-country championship wins, it goes without saying that the Cobh native was one of the greatest athletes of her generation.
Race walker and 2013 Irish Athlete of the Year, Rob Heffernan has also earned international renown after winning gold at last year's World Championships in Moscow. And even last week, he was handed a retrospective bronze medal for his exploits in the 20K at the 2010 European Championships.
Yet another Corkonian in Ciaran O'Lionaird has picked up a European medal, with the distance runner earning an Indoor Bronze at last year's European Championships in Goteborg.
Rugby
2009 Grand Slam winner and multiple Heineken Cup champion Ronan O'Gara also set many a marker individually.
The Racing Metro coach is the record appearance holder in the Heineken Cup as well as the runaway top point scorer in the competition's history, setting a high water mark of 1,365 points. The ERC also named the Presentation College student as the best player in the first 15 years of European club rugby.
At international level, ROG remains the record point scorer in the Six Nations.
Soccer
Cork has produced two of Ireland's greatest footballers in Roy Keane and Denis Irwin, with both winning everything club football has to offer and the former winning PFA Players' Player of the Year and Football Writers Association Footballer of the Year awards in 2000.
Keane was also the only Republic of Ireland player to make it into Pele's FIFA 100 list of the greatest living footballers back in 2004, even if some of Pele's other choices and omissions were criticized.
Both Keane and Irwin were named in the Premier League's Team of the Decade which was announced in 2003.
Horse racing
The late great horse trainer Vincent O'Brien hailed from Churchtown and in 2003 the Racing Post voted him the greatest influence in horse racing.
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