Enda McEvoy: Even a Leinster title wouldn't paper over the ugly Kilkenny cracks
Testing times: Brian Cody will simply not countenance losing again to opponents managed by one of his old boys Especially this old boy. His favourite son, his Luke Skywalker, now gone to the dark side. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
There is no need to invoke the shade of Oscar Wilde. One knows exactly what he’d say about Kilkenny tonight. The only thing in the world worse for them than losing would be winning.
And they may well win, turning Pearse Stadium defeat into Croke Park victory, spinning straw into silverware. It’s the kind of trick Brian Cody has pulled off time after time. We ought to know him well enough by now.
Galway were the better team in Salthill a month ago and the odds are they’ll be the better team again here. They had the greater spread of scorers – four of their number managed 0-2 or more apiece from play for an aggregate of 0-13 – and they’ll probably hit more points again here. In addition they’ll have Conor Whelan from the off.
But this is Kilkenny versus Galway and for all their limitations the former may not have to outhurl their opponents to best them. It has been one of the patterns of the relationship since time immemorial, the other neon thread being Galway’s habit of neutering the felines when least expected to.
Five weeks on from the incident that turned the nation into a bunch of amateur psychologists cum body-language experts wallowing in the perspicacity of their instant hot takes, round two of Cody versus Shefflin comes freighted with one total, utter and sublime certainty. Cody will simply not countenance losing again to opponents managed by one of his old boys Especially this old boy. His favourite son, his Luke Skywalker, now gone to the dark side.
Kilkenny will die with their boots on tonight and it may be enough. That, however, is only part of it. They’ll die with their boots on in the All Ireland series too and every page of the formbook screams that that will be nowhere near enough.
It wasn’t against Cork last year and it won’t be against Cork or Clare or Limerick this year. Not on the evidence of the slop they served up against Wexford.
You read here a while back that all the guff about the ‘New Kilkenny’ allegedly on view during the league – short passes, working the ball through the lines, yadda yadda yadda - was precisely that. Guff. You similarly read here a while back that best intentions would go out the window come the last ten minutes on a big day at Croke Park and that when the steam rose the men in stripes would regress to the mean, break out their inner Jack Charlton and lamp the sliotar mindlessly down the field.
In the event they didn’t even make it as far as Croke Park before resiling to bad habits.
Nothing more daunting than a well organised Wexford defence sufficed to freak them out a fortnight ago, with the analysts and stats guys subsequently confirming what our eyes told us on the night: too many of Kilkenny’s deliveries were struck from too far out, were too flat and too easy to defend against and were duly gobbled up.
The New Kilkenny indeed. But hey, why angle the ball 20 metres to an identifiable colleague in space – after all, that would entail care and patience - when it’s so much easier to take a big wind-up and whale it down the field to nobody (thereby triggering the Wexford counter attack, incidentally)? Thinking man’s hurling involves mental effort. Anti-intellectualism comes cheap.
At Semple Stadium in the All-Ireland U20 decider Derek Lyng’s Kilkenny youngsters, playing around corners, showcased what modern hurling can be and often is. The previous night in Nowlan Park the Kilkenny adults, playing in straight lines, showcased Cro-Magnon hurling.
It’s not hard to visualise the chagrin of the Leinster Council at Wexford’s mishap in Mullingar. For all that this has been a highly competitive, unexpectedly satisfying provincial round robin, just try picturing Croke Park tonight – or better still tomorrow afternoon, as was the case in 2019 – with the Yellowbellies involved. Hoppin'.
In their absence Kilkenny should be capable of shading a match they dare not lose. In which scenario the current cycle – winning Leinster, being exposed in the All Ireland series, lumpen hurling, unending stasis – will continue.
Oscar knew whereof he spoke. Careful what you wish for.
Occasionally we tie ourselves in knots looking down the road beyond the next turnoff, attempting to anticipate the fallout from a game before it takes place. Occam had it right with that razor of his. The simplest solution is the best.
Got a match to play? Go out and win the damn thing and leave the aftermath to take care of itself.
As Clare did so gloriously against Waterford, providing the briskest of refutations to the pre-match handwringing about what frame of mind they might or might not be in with a Munster final berth already booked, how strong an XV they might or might not field, which subs they might or might not give a run to. And so on and so, exhaustively and exhaustingly, forth.
Their singlemindedness was admirable if, given the identity of their manager, unsurprising. Wounded animals should be despatched as speedily and impartially as possible. On the basis of their 12 wides and the two saves they drew from Shaun O'Brien they might as easily have led by 25 points at half-time as by 13. Thus a fixture that on the face of it didn’t matter much to Clare was made to matter and ended up serving to accelerate their momentum.
Most of the teams left standing in the championship possess generic forward lines. The Banner possess anything but. Tony Kelly, Shane O’Donnell and Peter Duggan constitute a sort of contemporary equivalent of the mythological dog with the three heads.
On the downside, Clare players not called Kelly mustered only 0-8 from play between them against the champions at Cusack Park last month. Tomorrow, on an afternoon when David Reidy may be ubiquitous, David Fitzgerald will be required to get forward and trouble the opposition with the same muscularity and oomph he brought to bear on Waterford.
Limerick remain Limerick, buffed to a higher sheen than ever while retaining enough jagged edges both to ensure they won’t lose the physical battle and to rile the adherents of other teams. Yet the care with which John Kiely and Paul Kinnerk have succeeded in creating a big tent that accommodates all of God’s children deserves acknowledgement anew.
The Morrisseys and the Graeme Mulcahys, the workers (although everyone here is a worker) and the stylists. Under a less imaginative, less coaching-oriented regime Cian Lynch would be too good – the others wouldn’t be on his wavelength – whereas Gearoid Hegarty wouldn’t be good enough. Under Kiely and Kinnerk they’re each brilliant in ways that could barely be more dissimilar.
It is too early to be definitive about whether the recent run of injuries will prove to be a blessing in disguise, inducing a degree of creative tension, keeping people on their toes and giving a time-out to some who’ve had the foot to the floor since 2018. A fourth consecutive provincial title will yield the conclusion that the county’s strength in depth was greater than most observers, this one included, assumed.
Not yet has a fissure appeared in Limerick’s armour. Not yet have they shipped anything like the type of punch which shatters an aura, a la Buster Douglas and Mike Tyson, and after which there is no putting back the pieces.
In short, Clare’s graph is rising but Limerick’s ceiling remains higher. For this reason and no other it is a leap to visualise the underdogs winning. Run the champions to three or four points and the next time the counties meet, well, no leap may be necessary.
