Cats no longer possess the resources for a 20-man game

Of all the things that will exercise Brian Cody ahead of the All-Ireland hurling final replay, few will grate more than the thought that Anthony Cunningham has his measure.

On the basis that it was the least interesting of the myriad of talking points to emerge at Croke Park last Sunday, best to begin with Joe Canning’s equalising free.

Of course Davy Glennon threw himself forwards and downwards. What player wouldn’t have done the same? And of course Barry Kelly gave it. His choice in the circumstances was no choice at all: either cause a small fuss by awarding a free or cause a huge fuss by not awarding one. It is not in the DNA of referees to make a name for themselves at the supreme moment of an All Ireland final. Nor should they try.

If Kelly is to be criticised it should be for failing to spot, or at any rate failing to penalise, successive fouls on Tommy Walsh by Cyril Donnellan moments earlier. But to quote Donald Rumsfeld, stuff happens, and to quote just about anyone who’s ever philosophised about the nature of sport, these things even themselves out over time.

Mar shampla: three years ago, on a rockin’ Saturday night in Tullamore, Kelly chose not to give Walsh a second yellow card against Galway in the Leinster semi-final and Kilkenny survived. Swings and roundabouts, people. Swings and roundabouts.

Oh, and of course Brian Cody was animated at the final whistle on Sunday. Imagine: manager gets narky over dubious late free in thrilling game watched by 81,000 people and gets into argument with opposing manager! The nerve of him, eh..?

Be sensible. It would have been worrying had Cody and Anthony Cunningham not been sufficiently worked up to exchange a few choice words. That some people were offended — or claimed to be offended — by Brian Cody at the final whistle is because they wanted to be offended by Brian Cody.

Want to be critical of Cody last Sunday? Easily done. He was desperately poor on the line.

He often claims in public he gets “many things wrong” in any given year. He may even believe it. He certainly got them wrong with Richie Hogan.

Naming Hogan — the All Star left-corner forward last year and scorer of the decisive goal in the All Ireland final from that position — as Michael Rice’s replacement was predicated on one imperative and one imperative only: that Hogan would act as a jackrabbit third midfielder, an adjunct to Michael Fennelly and TJ Reid, hoovering up the crumbs that fell from the midfield quartet and thereby preventing Damien Hayes doing likewise.

Instead Kilkenny employed him as an out-and-out midfielder and the move blew up in their faces. Iarla Tannian, taller and broader and better equipped to carry a battle forwards, was man of the match. Enough said. And Hogan, a close-quarters assassin, would surely have billowed the net, as he did in the Leinster final, with the chance that Colin Fennelly saw saved by James Skehill. Double doh.

So Galway survive, and an idle thought from the aftermath of the Leinster final solidifies into a question. Does Anthony Cunningham have the measure of Brian Cody? (He’ll just love that one when he gets to hear it, won’t he?)

Of this much we can be sure of for the moment. For the second meeting in succession Cunningham sent out a team more certain of, and more comfortable with, the gameplan than Cody’s troops were with theirs. What modicum of coherent hurling was done was done by Galway in the first-half, winning reams of second-phase possession and looking to tee up a colleague from it.

Such ambitiousness went out the window on the resumption when the challengers opted for lockdown mode and, as in their previous two outings, contented themselves with lamping the ball forward out of defence any old way. But even if one does wonder whether Cunningham believes that the best form of defence is defence, it is hard to be overly condemnatory. For Galway this year read Jim McGuinness’s Donegal last year. One early reason to look forward to next summer is the prospect of seeing how Cunningham refines and expands his team’s style.

Enough of them played well to ensure they didn’t lose. Not enough of them played well to bring about a victory. This was a poor man’s version of Cork/Galway in 1990, a game of two halves except without the high explosives.

Kilkenny’s continued inability to get to the pitch of proceedings against these opponents is easily explained. Prior to throw-in the challengers had a collective 210 man-minutes of All Ireland final experience (Tony Óg Regan, David Collins and Damien Hayes from 2005). The champions had — jaws set rigid in fixed positions, please — a collective 4,199 man-minutes, going all the way back to Henry Shefflin in 1999. (I will happily accept the Hurling Statistic of the Year Award for that one, thank you very much. Even if they have to invent it.)

Which explains one thing. For Galway to do a number in the air on Cork in the semi-final was not a surprise. For them to do the same on Kilkenny, who were forearmed because forewarned, was on the face of it astonishing but less so when it’s remembered that the team who continued to bat the ball down and continued to win the breaks were the lads with the 210 man-minutes behind them, not the other crowd.

Regular readers will be wearily familiar with two points we’ve been waxing on about all summer. Firstly, that not only are Kilkenny not the team they were three or four years ago but cannot be expected to be; and secondly, that the well has run dry for the moment and they no longer possess the resources for a 20-man game. The second of these plights was illustrated in full six days ago.

Kilkenny beat Tipperary in 2009 largely because Cody emptied the bench and TJ Reid, Michael Fennelly and Martin Comerford hit 1-2 between them. Cody didn’t empty the bench on Sunday because, put simply, he had no bench to empty. Of his four forward subs, three did not possess a single minute of championship experience between them.

With age has come a loss of fifth gear and a decline in the scoring rate, from the unrepeatable high of 2008’s 3-30 against Waterford to the immensely impressive 2-22 in 2009 to the barely sufficient 2-17 last year to the not quite sufficient 0-19 here. To put it another way, we are witnessing the slow death of the greatest team ever.

The comparison with 2004, when a tiring, one-dimensional Kilkenny were holed beneath the waterline by Wexford but somehow chugged on until September, eventually to be overrun by a fresher Cork and their possession game in the second-half of the All Ireland final, is obvious. And it’s now abundantly clear that the All Ireland semi-final said less about them that it did about Tipperary.

Last Sunday could have been a dismal day for hurling. A nine-point defeat for Galway, a 10-point defeat for the Dublin minors, something of that order — and whatever one might say now, this (itals) was (close itals) a tacit fear beforehand. As it turned out, the afternoon bestowed blessings we had little right to expect.

For that, Lord, make us truly thankful. Dodgy late frees included.

Catastrophe? More like catalyst

Davy Fitzgerald, Brian Lohan, Conor Clancy and Jamesie O’Connor won All-Ireland senior medals with Clare in 1995, having been members of a team beaten by Waterford three years earlier in the Munster U21 final.

Willie O’Connor, Bill Hennessy, Liam Keoghan and Michael Phelan won All-Ireland senior medals with Kilkenny in 1993, having been members of a team beaten by 15 points by Cork five years earlier in the All-Ireland U21 final. The consolation for the losers of tonight’s fascinating-looking U21 showdown in Thurles to take home with them and nurture? Simple. Failure in the grade is no bar to success at senior level. In fact, it can be a spur.