Enda McEvoy: The next milestone on the latest Cody renovation job?
STILL THE SAME: Kilkenny manager Brian Cody still hymns the old-fashioned merits he’s always hymned, all that stuff about hard work and spirit and perseverance. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
It's Croke Park in July so it must be the Leinster final and it must be Brian Cody. Hurling’s longest running residency.
At this stage it’s easier to count the ones he’s missed (2004, ’13 and ’17) than the ones he’s been there for (all the others plus an underground gig in Semple Stadium in 2018). One of these years Kilkenny will contest a provincial decider with someone else wearing the Bainisteoir’s shirt. Somehow it won’t feel right.
What’s changed since 1999?
Everything. Henry Shefflin lined out that day. Eoin Cody lines out Saturday night. Eoin Cody is Shefflin’s nephew. The tributaries continue flowing.
What’s unchanged since 1999?
Everything. Cody is still Cody. He still hymns the old-fashioned merits he’s always hymned, all that stuff about hard work and spirit and perseverance. Perhaps the greatest of his myriad virtues, he still retains the ability to send out a group of young men to do a job on a given day. On any given day. On every given day.
That a team will turn up and perform to the best of their ability sounds the simplest thing in the world. It is nothing of the sort. Only twice in those 23 seasons have Kilkenny failed to get boots on the ground on a championship day: the 2001 All-Ireland semi-final against Galway and the 2016 All-Ireland final against Tipperary.
On every other occasion the spirit was willing and they brought the noise. If some days the flesh didn’t quite get the message, as against Waterford last winter, it was because those particular wearers of the stripes weren’t good enough, not because the focus was off-register.
Dónal Óg Cusack put it neatly and generously on The Sunday Game after the Wexford match. “When it comes to the fundamentals of the fire in the belly and the desire to win, you must give it to Kilkenny for their consistency. They’re always up for it.”
Prior to the start of extra-time a fortnight ago the RTÉ radio talking heads agreed that the game would be won by — yawn — the team that “wanted it most”, triteness of the kind that demeans punditry. In the event the issue was decided by the obvious metrics: strength on the bench and fitness levels. Desire didn’t come into it. As if Davy’s lads were any less ravenous than their opponents.
But Kilkenny continue to produce young hurlers of a reasonable standard, one of the factors that saw them over the line. Even if Cody’s hands have, as pointed out here recently, been tied by the absence of an All-Ireland U20/U21 title since 2008, the production line hasn’t stopped churning out teenage models.
In micro terms losing three successive minor finals to Galway, none of which they could in any case have been expected to win on grounds of physique, can’t have been pleasant. In macro terms we’ll see in 10 years which of the two counties did better in the long run with their respective cohorts. It is no harm to recall that Shefflin, JJ Delaney, Tommy Walsh, and TJ Reid never appeared in an All-Ireland minor decider, never mind won one.
Among the patterns of Cody’s two decades as householder of the mansion on the Nore has been the regularity with which he’s overseen internal renovation jobs. Last year’s second-half collapses against Dublin and Waterford called for something more drastic than merely a rearrangement of the furniture.
Conor Phelan came on board as a selector and has done most of the coaching. Match analysis has been outsourced. If a weakness existed in the S&C regime, as evidenced against Dublin and Waterford, the express-train finish against Wexford indicated it’s been rectified.
Most strikingly of all there’s a psychologist available to players who feel the need of a sympathetic ear. It may or may not be a nod to Jackie Tyrrell’s revelations about feeling isolated and unwanted during the latter stages of his career; it is certainly a tacit admission by Cody that while his impression of the gunnery sergeant in Full Metal Jacket was fine during the days of plenty, one voice does not fit all in fallow times when carrots are necessarily of more use than sticks. Paint it Black and Amber indeed.
How long before Kilkenny win their next All-Ireland? Will Cody be there for it? Will TJ be there for it, thereby becoming the most deserving winner of a Celtic cross since George O’Connor? These are not esoteric questions. And here’s one more ceist. If Kilkenny are not going to win an All-Ireland under Cody in the next two or three years, are they really going to win one under Duine Eile?
The next milepost on the road to a MacCarthy Cup involves a feat they haven’t managed for half a decade. Hurling the ears off the other crowd in a big match.
They won the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final slightly against the head by hitting Limerick hard, hitting them early and making the best of their way home thereafter. They won the 2020 Leinster final largely against the head via a 90-second highlights reel showcasing the best of Reid and Richie Hogan.
A performance that features the ancient Noreside verities is overdue, which is not to say it’s imminent. Something crisp and fluent and angled; something that entails thinking around corners and making mischief in the margins and looking for access via the window if the front door is bolted; something not unlike what the county’s women produced against Galway in the second half of the National League camogie decider.
The semi-final ought to be worth the equivalent of a fortnight’s training. Against that, Dublin possess an abrasiveness Wexford do not.
It is easy to damn Mattie Kenny’s side with faint praise by breaking out the usual platitudes: big, strong, well coached, cleverly organised, tactically astute. It is equally easy to see Eoin Murphy going long with his puckouts and failing to get them past the Dublin half-back line. Handball against a haystack.
But it should be Kilkenny. As simple and simplistic as that.
Croke Park on Saturday is, as lovely Johnny Donne might have said, an island, entire of itself. Páirc Uí Chaoimh Sunday has potential for echoes that resound next month.
The events of the 2019 Munster final, regardless of Limerick’s fate afterwards, make it easy to hazard a guess at the mindset of the Tipperary fans. If the challengers don’t win here they must at least not lose by more than three or four points, the sort of margin that if it comes to it could easily be turned around in Croke Park in August. Theoretically so at any rate, and theoretical comforts are the only comforts available to Munster final losers.
Limerick’s opening night in Thurles was straight out of that part of the manual concerning champions who’ve been on the road a while. Retain their titles and the Cork game will be deemed to have been the evening they got the wax out of their ears; fail to retain their titles and the Cork game will be cemented as the evening when the first lines of their impending doom appeared scrawled on the wall.
Much has been made of their late return to training and the consequent possibility of undercooking the main course. The obvious riposte is that Paul Kinnerk has shown himself to be a dab hand at calculating and calibrating the fine margins.
Yet Limerick look to have less on the bench this time around than meets the eye. Bringing on subs who may score points when you’re four up is not the same as bringing on subs who have to score points when you’re four down.
A more pressing issue, however, is that of Tipperary’s motivation. Are they going to keep allowing Limerick kick sand in their face? Will their pride, their race memory, countenance it? Is this not the day, and more to the point the opposition, Liam Sheedy has spent the last six months plotting for?
Here’s one warning from history for the holders to note. The 2010 All-Ireland final excepted, Tipperary endured a long run of big-match defeats to Kilkenny. They kept plugging at it and in the end the wheel turned. In 2010, incidentally, Tipperary lost most of the big battles around the field but won the biggest battle: because they got in four dagger thrusts from close quarters and those thrusts proved fatal.
Some other observations.
Limerick cannot continue giving referees scope to make a name for themselves.
Appreciating the Mahers, Noel McGrath and Seamus Callanan while they’re still here doesn’t mean that Tipp folk won’t appreciate them even more when they’re gone.
Michael Breen’s goal against Clare. On soft ground, of course, but no matter. Breen had the wristwork to keep teeing the sliotar up for himself and the balance to keep his feet aligned. Imagine the acclaim had Callanan scored it.
The qualifier draw worked out neatly for the quartet. Waterford needed to avoid one of the big guns; Laois will have been relieved not to be landed with more daunting opponents; Clare and Wexford, well matched and of late conspicuous non-friends to a highly public and highly entertaining degree, constitute ideal opponents for one another.
Clare. Waterford. Kilkenny. Limerick. Cody.
