Kilkenny’s day, Kilkenny’s era

KILKENNY, then.

The what-ifs and the well-thens and the on-the-other-hands lurked all week but for the well-read in attendance at Croke Park yesterday the scene was right out of Carlyle: the coming time already waits, unseen, yet definitely shaped, predetermined, and inevitable.

Kilkenny won a hard All-Ireland hurling final in a familiar way, the way they have won for a decade and more: through merciless tackling, through consummate skill, through correct option-taking — and above all, through hunger.