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Breaking stories

Cats are back for a dogfight

Saturday, August 18, 2012

By Diarmuid O’Flynn

What have Kilkenny and Brian Cody been doing behind closed doors in Nowlan Park since the Leinster final loss to Galway?

You think they just wanted to lick their wounds in private? No, my friends, the Kilkenny think-tank has been in full flow, planning, devising and practising with the result to be unveiled in Croke Park against Tipperary tomorrow in the All-Ireland semi-final.

Listen, if there’s anyone out there still naïve enough to believe Kilkenny don’t do tactics, that they are the last great upholders of hurling’s supposedly revered gospel, ‘Thou shalt not even attempt to compose a game-plan!’, well, there’s a book ye must read.

Penned by Enda McEvoy of this parish, the Godfather Of Modern Hurling — The Father Tommy Maher Story doesn’t just burst that bubble, it toys with it, has its fun with it, before dispatching it into a million particles into the stratosphere.

In it you’ll learn that long before the year 1998BC (Before Cody) the seeds of Kilkenny’s latter-day greatness were sown by the aforementioned Tommy Maher.

From the first year the St Kieran’s College-based pastor took over the Kilkenny senior team, 1957, tactics became a major element of his coaching methodology. Team tactics, individual tactics, positional tactics, but tactics all the way. He espoused a short hand-passing game ! and it had instant success. It led that year to Kilkenny’s first All-Ireland title in ten years, followed it with six more over the next couple of decades.

Under the Godfather, Kilkenny’s hurling greatness was thus restored.

The cover photograph is most interesting. It shows Tommy Maher in Nowlan Park, in clerical garb but with hurley in hand, expounding to a group of players – it’s probably around the time of the 1972 All-Ireland final. All are paying full attention but one in particular stands out, and not just because of his stature; a young and thus most likely impressionable Brian Cody stands entranced, fully focused, eyes boring in on the teacher. You think Brian Cody didn’t learn?

‘Kilkenny for the hurlers, Tipperary for the men!’ was a saying that – according to Enda’s book — dates back to the conclusion of the All-Ireland final of 1916 when Kilkenny were beaten yet again by their neighbours, at the end of which their captain Sim Walton is reported to have said to his Tipp counterpart Johnny Leahy – “We were better hurlers Leahy!” to which came the succinct replay – “But we were better men Sim!”.

Roll forward to 1966, Kilkenny still very much under the Tipperary thumb, a long litany of shattered dreams. Tommy Maher was determined, however – this would have to change. In that year’s league ‘home’ final, in a foul-weather dog-fight, Kilkenny edged Tipperary. It was the beginning. The following year, a league game in Nowlan Park, went beyond dogfight. In the book Enda recounts this was the day Tipperary’s Mackey McKenna refused to go anywhere near Kilkenny full-back Pa Dillon ‘sharpening his hurley in there!’

Finally, in the All-Ireland final of 1967, the worm turned. In Enda’s words, the Godfather had made an executive decision – ‘If Kilkenny were to lose to the old enemy it would be because they were hurled out of it, not horsed out of it’.

So he brought in his own horses. John Teehan, Frank Cummins, Pat Henderson, Pa Dillon, Pat Delaney, Ned Byrne and Brian Cody were introduced to the Kilkenny team, men who could hurl but men also who could handle themselves.

Roll forward to 2002, Kilkenny reigning All-Ireland champions but outmuscled by Galway in the semi-final. Now it’s Brian Cody in charge and as with Tommy Maher in 1967 but it’s Cody making an executive decision. Henceforth, anyone wearing that famous jersey would have to be able to win his own ball.

So, you think Cody’s Kilkenny won’t be tactical tomorrow. No sir. Kilkenny will have their game-plan worked on and worked out. Kilkenny do tactics. They also rely on physical dominance. It’s in the blood.

© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved

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