Create a Cody/Davy hybrid manager and you’d arrive at a happy medium
Yes, long.
It’s also untrue, unfortunately, albeit only barely. As the county’s GAA historian Dominic Williams confirms, Wexford last got the better of Kilkenny in the National League at Nowlan Park on October 13, 1957.
Rackard wasn’t playing because he’d hurled his last match in the purple and gold against the same opponents in the Leinster final two months earlier. It’s still a long wait, clearly, even if — in the way of these things — there were many years in between when the teams simply didn’t meet in the league, whether on Noreside or Slaneyside.
To decree the hiatus will scarcely end tomorrow is stating the obvious. Tom Dempsey may have been overdoing the fear factor when he fretted during the week about the possibility of “a bad beating” for the visitors, mind. While you can see where he was coming from (yes indeed — Kilmuckridge) the fact of the matter is that Kilkenny are no longer in the business of inflicting calculated punishment beatings.
Brian Cody has more pressing priorities these days than mind games and the only thing that need concern him here is not the despatching of a loud message ahead of a putative championship meeting of the counties but rather seeing how his chosen XV and subs fare.
As simple as that. Really.
And where exactly are Kilkenny right now? Being mortal and vulnerable and inexact and spirited and quite interesting. Slouching towards Bethlehem, as it were. Trundling towards a better place, albeit slowly and painfully and beset by injuries. A recent pattern continued in Parnell Park last Sunday: The forward line gradually finding their groove but the defence still lacking stability, a state of affairs compounded by the injuries to Pádraig Walsh and Conor O’Shea. If Wexford opt to go for it there’s mileage to be clocked up against the home full-back line.
For a long-term forecast regarding Kilkenny, try this. They’ll be decent, and perhaps a little more besides, come summer. They could be really good in 2018.
As for the notion of Wexford going for it…
Well, that’ll automatically necessitate Davy abandoning his safety-first instincts. Yet would that be the worst thing in the world, Tom Dempsey’s misgivings notwithstanding?
Assuming they win the provincial quarter-final, Wexford Park on June 10 will be more stoutly defended than Fort Knox. Sweepers and stoppers and spare men and deadbolts and electronic tripwires and facial recognition software. They don’t need to be giving Cody a guided tour of that alarm system tomorrow. This doesn’t automatically equate to running a non-trier, however. They can expect Kilkenny’s response to a packed defence to be the tried and trusted Kilkenny response to a packed defence: lamp the sliotar up the field and then be all surprised when it comes back instantly.
Quick angled Wexford ball into a five-man forward line will ask questions of the home defenders. After that it’ll be a matter of maintaining the pace for 70 minutes rather than for 35 and of guarding against third-quarter leakage.
The imperative for Wexford is to go home not merely having given a performance — at this stage under Davy we’re entitled to expect that from them — but also equipped with greater self-knowledge. Which lads measured up against their immediate opponents? Which lads didn’t? Above all, which lads will Cody identify and aim to go to town on in June? If Davy ends up having to redraft chunks of his championship blueprint tomorrow night it won’t constitute Armageddon. Better to be wise before the event.
As well as being viewed through a championship prism tomorrow’s proceedings will also be mediated via the personae of both managers. Cody because he’s a serial winner. Davy because he’s Davy.
The strapline over an online piece during the week about the pair described them as “two of hurling’s most enigmatic managers” — patently the handiwork of an over-excited sub-editor, given that just about the only person on the planet less enigmatic than Davy Fitz is Donald Trump.
Is there a rivalry between them? A rivalry over and above Cody’s rivalry with any other manager?
In Davy’s mind there probably is. In Cody’s mind there surely isn’t. But both are hurling obsessives who live, eat and breathe the game, and if on the face of it Cody is by far the more successful, with 11 All-Ireland titles as manager to Fitzgerald’s one, the latter, although he’s been on the scene only half as long as Cody has, is one way a more experienced manager with a broader CV.
He’s travelled. He’s experimented. He’s erred. He’s learned. He’s managed Waterford, Clare and now Wexford, and it’ll be no surprise if he fetches up in Dublin or Galway one of these days. Cody has only ever managed one county and only ever will.
t may be overdoing it to hold that Davy has thought more about the game than Cody has, if only because, with lesser resources at his disposal most of the time, he’s been required to improvise. It’s not overdoing it to hold that at any rate he’s thought about it in more esoteric ways. Davy loves his tactics; Cody didn’t get into tactics until he met Mick Dempsey and Martin Fogarty on the road to Damascus.
Last September, of course, he didn’t do them at all. That Kilkenny full-back line. That Tipperary full-forward line. The space in front of them and the supply of ball being shovelled through. And Cody did nothing. Had Davy been in the same situation he’d have had an extra man back there in jig time. Nor was it the first time the Kilkenny full-back line had been exposed last year. Davy’s Clare undressed them in the league semi-final.
But it’s one thing to recognise the importance of tactics and another to be in thrall to them. Create a Cody/Davy hybrid manager and you’d arrive at a happy medium. Last summer Clare’s lack of goals was seriously hampering them and would eventually kill them. The manager still refused to deploy a six-man attack, even in extremis against Galway. Bizarre.
On the plus side, with Wexford he has fewer resources to deploy than he had with Clare. That ought to mean he won’t end up tying himself, and his team, in tactical knots of his own devising.
That their form has tailed off of late isn’t a surprise. The
of their early wins against Limerick and Galway, fixtures they’d targeted, proved to be more than
and secured them promotion. But they drove 16 wides against Offaly and 18 against Laois and they need to get their free-taking sorted. Tom Dempsey fears a blowout. The Examiner, this being a clash both managers would have preferred to avoid, fears a slow bicycle race. What would Nickey Rackard have thought? Exactly.
Create a Cody-Davy hybrid manager and you’d arrive at a happy medium
