John Gardiner (born 8 February 1983) is an Irish retired hurler who played for Cork Senior Championship club Na Piarsaigh.
A commanding and combative defender, Gardiner was part of a dominant half-back line that also included Seán Óg Ó hAilpín and Ronan Curran.
From his debut, Gardiner was ever-present as a defender and made a combined total of 104 National League and Championship appearances in a career that ended with his last game in 2004 and 2005.
[2] Gardiner won his only All-Star in 2005 while he was also selected as Hurler of the Year by his peers in the Gaelic Players Association.
At inter-provincial level, he was selected to play in six championship campaigns with Munster and claimed Railway Cup medals as captain in 2005 and 2007.
He was educated at Scoil Isogain before later attending St. Finbarr's College, a hurling nursery for local talent.
It was here that Gardiner first tasted success as he became a key member of many of the school's victorious hurling and Gaelic football teams.
After enjoying little success in the minor and under-21 grades, he subsequently joined the Na Piarsaigh senior hurling team and became a key fixture at left wing-back.
A series of embarrassing defeats saw the Cork hurling team reach rock bottom and call a players' strike just before Christmas in 2002.
In 2003 Cork's players were vindicated in taking a stand as the team reached the Munster final for the first time in three years.
In what many consider to be the greatest provincial championship decider of them all, both sides fought tooth-and-nail for the full seventy minutes.
[12] Subsequent one-point victories over Limerick and Waterford saw Cork qualify for their fourth consecutive All-Ireland final and for the third time Kilkenny were the opponents.
He was later re-appointed for a further two-year term by the Cork County Board, in spite of the majority of the players not wanting him to stay on.
The players on the 2008 panel, with Gardiner as one of the most vocal leaders of the strike, refused to play or train under McCarthy.
McCarthy accordingly began the 2009 National League campaign with a new squad, none of whom had been able to make the previous year's panel.
[16] Gardiner won a second Railway Cup title in 2007 as Munster defeated Connacht under floodlights at Croke Park.