Kilkenny show difference between greatness and brilliance

YOU wouldn’t have caught it on the telly, the director either choosing to go to a replay or onto something else, but when Henry Shefflin scored his first point from play on Sunday and later shouldered a Tipperary back over the sideline for a Kilkenny lineball, he gave a little jump and animatedly fisted the air.

He wasn’t exactly all Waterford and John Mullane and Eoin Kelly about it.

He wasn’t even Shane McGrath about it. But clearly one of the things he took from last year’s All-Ireland was that Tipperary had been dominant in virtually everything, including their body language, and taken great energy and pride in winning and making certain plays: a dirty ball here, a hook and a block there.