An aggressive middle-order batsman renowned for his leg-side play, Horan supplemented his batting by bowling medium-pace in the roundarm style common to his era, and once captured six wickets in a Test match innings.

During a season disrupted by financial disputes and a strike by leading players, he captained Australia in two Test matches of the 1884–85 Ashes series, but lost both games.

He established himself as the first Australian cricket writer who had played the game at the highest level, thus paving the way for many players to enter the media.

Bill O'Reilly, the noted Australian player-writer of the twentieth century, described him as, "the cricket writer par excellence".

"[2] Born in the town of Midleton near the Irish city of Cork, Horan emigrated to Australia with his parents and siblings as a small child.

In the following Test, Horan, having been stripped of his captaincy duties, made a significant impact with the ball, returning figures of 6/40 from 37.1 four-ball overs in England's first innings at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

[6] He turned his attention to journalism, writing a regular cricket column for The Australasian, a weekly published by Melbourne's Argus newspaper.

Haigh writes that Horan "was not an adventurous stylist: he wrote, instead, with his ears and eyes, with a sense of the telling remark and the evocative detail.