PM O'Sullivan: A growing sense that something lies amiss in Kilkenny hurling

This evening, Brian Cody will be ratified. He faces his 24th season as Kilkenny hurling manager. We have probably lost sight of how awesome an achievement this stint represents. Picture: Stephen McCarthy

New starts can involve familiar decisions.

This evening, the Kilkenny County Board will put forward its chosen management team at various levels, minor to senior, for ratification by club delegates. These figures, should they wish, can halt the process by entering a countermotion. Contrary to some comment, this possibility is a longstanding one.

Speculation drifted around, like smoke from an invisible fire, over the last fortnight. Talk about a possible glitch in what has long been a seamless process, talk of one club wondering about an alternative candidate for senior manager. Or at least of the club wanting to initiate a debate: ‘Is it time for a change?’

My sense is that soundings were taken, a telling enough development, but faltered due to the tight schedule involved. Inter-county resumption looked a near horizon, until this virus swung back hard. Had Kilkenny been beaten last July in an All-Ireland semi-final, the dynamic might well have been different.

Aidan ‘Taggy’ Fogarty remarked in early December: “We haven’t won an All-Ireland in five years and to us, I suppose, that’s nearly a drought.”

He continued: “If it was any other manager in Kilkenny, I think his head would be on the chopping block.”

The former forward’s word carried weight.

This evening, Brian Cody will be ratified. He faces his 24th season in the job. We have probably lost sight of how awesome an achievement this stint represents. And Cody keeps driving ahead in exactly the same fashion, a GAA volunteer among GAA volunteers. This aspect is not least of his achievements.

Yet no smoke can arise in a vacuum, because a fire requires oxygen. To say otherwise would be disingenuous. The enabling atmosphere is a growing sense within the county that something lies amiss in its hurling. Hardly anyone feels an All-Ireland senior title ended up squandered in recent times. There is just a conviction that the seniors are not doing themselves full justice.

Does Kilkenny’s hurling lack sophistication? Have other counties’ puckout gambits and preparation regimes gone into the distance? Limerick remain the leading case in point, naturally, even though Kilkenny beat them last year.

I find the situation complex and in some ways opaque. Recent seasons saw lamentably blunt displays, tactically, against Wexford and yet this assessment is not full picture.

Item: a quick puckout to Jackie Tyrrell at left corner-back, in 2000’s heyday, stayed an arrow in the quiver. Tyrrell’s massive drive off left side would clear the opposition half-back line, negating their desire to withdraw a full-forward as cover. There was no fuss about this option, one infrequently deployed as opponents knew its implication: do not let this Kilkenny team reach their full-forward line off their own puckout.

Again, Brian Cody devised an excellent riposte to Clare’s use of Alan Markham as a sweeper in 2004’s All-Ireland quarter-final. For that replay, Martin Comerford got sent to shadow Markham and Clare’s supposed trump became the wrong suit. Cody likewise devised a means of dismantling the Cork puckout for 2006’s senior final, marking zonally at the back, emphasising their half-forward line’s lack of fetchers.

From this angle, the problem is not tactical unawareness per se. Not so, based on early and middle parts of Cody’s career. What is the reason behind eschewing similar pragmatism now? The point is opaque.

Hardly anyone in Kilkenny, least of all me, wants to see hurling played by Tim Tappy and Tom Tippy. But most of the current players are known to be frustrated about the lack of pre-match analysis and consequent difficulties when an alternative plan is required for stretches of a game.

Cody’s mantra about attackers ‘winning their own ball’ is one I admire. This emphasis served defiantly well as default setting and left no excuses for laziness or shyness. But you would imagine there could be a halfway house in the camp where bespoke preparation might meet intense application.

But here, I am told, stands a bugbear. The camp is not a vibrant place. Since 2017, I keep hearing the same descriptions.

Stale … A drag … Joyless … These terms are repeated in dispiriting degree. And lack of vibrancy seemed to be reflected, this winter, in Kilkenny’s dramatic second-half collapses against Dublin and Waterford. Here is what most deeply concerns supporters, some kind of dry rot in the hurlers’ morale, despite evident periods of resilience.

Yet any notion that a new manager would make all well strikes me as simplistic. There are other medium-term issues that require urgent attention.

Take juvenile development squads. Here nestles a certain irony, in that Kilkenny were in the vanguard, in 2001 under Ned Quinn, on this front. But the last three or four years witnessed vociferous local criticism of the squads in various regards. The mood music altered, big time.

People love to give out and normally I would not pay too much heed. But this hubbub has been too sustained, too consistent in its queries, not to contain substance.

A new coaching officer in the county board did get elected in 2020. Most observers thought the swerve useful. The hope is that this man will reshape the system, attracting a new flush of mentors and trainers who can develop young players for long haul.

Relatedly or not, there is another urgent issue, a pattern where promising hurlers are not training on from minor. A flat performance in 2017, losing the U21 All-Ireland final to Limerick, became representative disappointment in this regard. The U20s’ recent display in their Leinster semi-final, flaccidly losing to Galway, extended this narrative.

I do not know Brian Cody in the slightest. But I do know, like the majority of GAA people in the county, Ned Quinn a small bit. Quinn remains an immensely capable individual. There is also a drive to him I always relished. He would go through a sceach ditch for Mooncoin, for Kilkenny, for hurling.

But where is the next Ned Quinn? Then again, maybe this query becomes too much to ask. You do not need an MBA from Harvard Business School to know an entity created by two strong-minded singular men in the success phase will encounter difficulties in this entity’s transition phase.

Brickbats are not necessarily required. Who knows where the time goes, as Sandy Denny had it. Maybe sport falls, twice over, into seasons. Kilkenny, driven by wise bitterness and brilliant hurlers, were great. Now Kilkenny, beset by staleness and much less gifted hurlers, are far from great. Any surprise there?

Not so much. Anyhow, I was a Kilkenny supporter before this writing lark started and I will be a Kilkenny supporter when this writing lark finishes. Ballyhale Shamrocks made me.

I feel the same way about Kilkenny hurling as I feel about The Fall and John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing (1960), gratitude at being alive to witness such unforgiving brilliance. To watch Tommy Walsh hurl was like listening to ‘I Feel Voxish’, the same acceleration of possibilities. The best of life is undeceived joy.

But not all of life can be joy. And now Kilkenny folk must find education in all sorts.

Cody in numbers

By Leo McGough

105:

Cody, from 1999 to 2020, has managed Kilkenny in 105 championship games, steering the Cats to 78 wins, eight draws, and suffering 19 defeats, 10 of which have come since (and including) the 2016 All-Ireland final when their drive for an unprecedented five-in-a-row came to a halt.

11, 16, and 9: 11 All-Ireland, 16 Leinster, and nine NHL titles as manager, a total major trophy haul of 36. Throw in seven Walsh Cups and an Oireachtas crown and the tally rises to 44.

24: Cody, from 1973 to 1985, played 24 championship games with Kilkenny, 23 as a starter, 19 in defence, and four at full forward.

3, 4, and 2: He won three All-Ireland senior medals — 1975, 1982 (as captain), 1983 — four Leinster and two NHL — 1975-76 and 1981-82 (as captain) as a player, a total major trophy haul of nine.

1 and 1: As a man who has often called a player ashore, Cody himself only experienced the curly finger once in championship fare, replaced by Joe Hennessy, a fellow Village clubman, in the 49th minute of the 1976 Leinster final in Croke Park when Wexford were resounding winners. Cody also made one appearance as a sub, coming on in the 13th minute in place of full-back Jim Moran in Kilkenny’s unsuccessful 1981 Leinster semi-final with Wexford.

4-10: It might come as a surprise that Cody’s championship scoring tally stands at a respectable 4-10, 3-6 of which came in 1978 when, sited at full-forward, he scored 2-2 (v Offaly in Portlaoise), 0-2 (v Wexford in the Leinster final), and 1-2 (v Galway, All-Ireland semi-final). He failed to score in the All-Ireland final v Cork.