Cats just purring along in low gear
He must be new on the job, otherwise he’d know – Kilkenny supporters don’t get excited over winning Leinster finals, they keep their celebrations for bigger days. Mind you, if it had been the other way around, if Dublin had won, then I’m not so sure your man would have been making the same announcement!
And in fairness to those Dublin supporters, while they didn’t turn up in the kind of numbers we’ve become used to seeing following the footballers, there was still a good crowd there, a good crowd on the Hill too, and they made enough noise to make up for those who haven’t copped on to the fact that Dublin now also have a good senior hurling team.
That doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about the venue for this final; it should have been held in a venue like Portlaoise, where the atmosphere would have been fantastic.
Imagine 30,000 people there, a few thousand more from Laois and Offaly, the kind of spectacle we’d have had; as it was, there were over 50,000 empty seats in Croke Park – too much. Maybe next year, they’ll finally cop on.
To the match. On the evidence of what I saw yesterday, Kilkenny are either slipping, or they were in first gear – I think the latter. They were nowhere near their best, certainly didn’t look like a team that’s going for four All-Ireland titles in a row.
I also believe that this is deliberate policy by Kilkenny – they are doing just enough to win. They did that yesterday, did it against Galway in the semi-final, when they were better than they were yesterday, because they had to be. By my estimation, only three Kilkenny players played up to their usual form yesterday – JJ Delaney, Martin Comerford, and Michael Rice. Other than those, the rest were going through the motions.
When was the last time you saw Eoin Larkin playing this poorly? Or Eddie Brennan, Aidan Fogarty, even Henry Shefflin himself? I’ll give you a couple of instances – Derek Lyng powering through the middle of the Dublin defence in the first-half, but tapping over the bar, Aidan Fogarty doing likewise, again in the first half, when each time the goal was on.
Rest assured, if that had been against Galway or Tipperary or Cork, Kilkenny would have gone for those goals, would have buried any of those teams – against Dublin, they were content to take the point, because they didn’t believe the same threat was there.
Even PJ Ryan, caught for going outside his square when taking a short puckout – a short puckout! – with Alan McCrabbe pointing the resultant 65 for Dublin – what does that tell you about Kilkenny’s concentration yesterday, their focus?
They weren’t tuned into this game, not like they would have been if they’d been facing a team they really saw as a threat.
Does this mean Dublin weren’t up to scratch yesterday? Well they were at their best, no question about that, and when you look through their team, you see a lot of individuals who played very well.
Tomás Brady, Stephen Hiney, John McCaffrey, Alan McCrabbe, Dotsie O’Callaghan, David Treacy, Oisin Gough – a lot more boys in blue playing well than the boys in black-and-amber. But that said, I still think Dublin are a bit off the pace, a bit off the very top level, and I think that will be shown up in their next game, in the quarter-final, depending of course on who they meet in that game.
Overall, I thought this was a poor game, far too open, scores coming too easily; it looked to me as though any time Kilkenny needed a score, they got it, while Dublin were far too reliant on Alan McCrabbe. 12 points he finished with, eight of those from frees, one from a sideline, only three from play. David Treacy had three, so how many did that leave?
Fifteen points between two players, three points between the rest of the Dublin attack? Not a good sign. On the Kilkenny side, eight different scorers, a far better spread, and this on a day when, as I said, they were only in first gear.
To go back to where we came in, I wonder in whose car boot the Bob O’Keeffe trophy is resting today? And remember too, it was collected by Michael Fennelly, a guy who didn’t even play yesterday, though he is fully fit.
No lads, this was not Kilkenny at their best, and Leinster titles don’t mean much to them anymore. Two games is all they have in mind this year – the All-Ireland semi-final, the All-Ireland final.
We’ll see a different Kilkenny team on August the ninth, I assure ye that, and if we don’t, there will be no four-in-a-row.
Why? After events in Tullamore on Saturday night, there is danger lurking around the corner; the men in red are still there, and by all accounts they have found themselves a goal-scorer, in Aisake O hAilpín.
Cork still have a rocky road ahead of them, but you can be sure that they too, have a big date in their heads. Take it as read that all the teams still left in this championship would like to avoid meeting those guys.
