Brace yourself: Incredible Cats could yet become The Men For Ten
When Brian Cody won his first All Ireland title as Kilkenny manager, TJ Reid was 11 years of age. Last Sunday, Reid won his fourth All-Ireland senior medal.
To think, none of that brilliant Waterford team of McGrath, Mullane and Flynn managed to win even one.
Earlier this summer, we interviewed the former Tipperary hurler Aidan Ryan. He retired with two All-Ireland medals the year Cody took over Kilkenny, thinking he’d never see in his lifetime another hurler win more than four All-Ireland medals, so competitive was the hurling landscape.
But that was life BC: Before Cody. To repeat, Reid is already on his fourth. And the truly frightening prospect is that he may go on to win a lot more.
In recent days, there have rightly been comparisons between this Kilkenny team and the Kerry footballers of ‘75-86, a nod to the fact that Christy Ring wasn’t the only GAA icon of the 20th century overtaken at the weekend; just as Henry Shefflin made the huge leap from eight to nine All-Irelands, so did Cody the manager, moving him ahead of the once untouchable Mick O’Dwyer.
One of the parallels being drawn between the two teams is that their four-in-a-row sides were considerably superior to their later incarnations, that just as the Kerry team of ‘84 to ‘86 wasn’t quite as dominant or as vigorous as the side of ‘78 to ‘81, Kilkenny are likewise managing to win All-Irelands while in decline, a trend that at most has only another All-Ireland in it. A closer examination of their respective age profiles though would hint there might be a lot more in Kilkenny and Reid than just that one more.
Four of the Kerry forwards that started the 1986 All-Ireland were all over 30 years of age. Henry Shefflin was the only starting Kilkenny forward last Sunday over 28 years of age. Eoin Larkin is still only 27. Richie Power is still only 26. Reid and Richie Hogan are still only 23.
They’re not exactly Mikey, Power and Spillane in the twilight of their careers, and with all due respect to the following Kerry servants, they carry a bit more substance about them than Timmy Dowd or Willie Maher. Unlike O’Dwyer, Cody has never been dependent on the one crop of players. The transition has been more seamless, the conveyor belt more constant. He has now won an All-Ireland without Eddie Brennan, two without Martin Comerford, an incredible six without DJ.
One day they might even be able to win one without Henry. They wouldn’t have been able to win this one without him but they won this year’s league without him and have repeatedly shown in that competition over those five years that they can be competitive without him.
Besides, he won’t be finishing up for at least another year or two yet. Now that he’s likely to have a winter free from injury, he’ll want to enjoy having a good run of games free. Ring once said: “Hurling has always been a way of life with me. It was never my ambition to play the game for the sake of winning All-Ireland medals or breaking records but to perfect the art as well as possible.” Shefflin is likewise propelled by such purer, loftier motives.
What has been the hallmark of this Kilkenny team though is how it has reacted to losing. They’ve never seen it as something terminal, just an opportunity to learn and renew.
That is what has distinguished them from their rivals.
When Tipp won the All-Ireland two years ago, Kilkenny — Cody, the county board — viewed it as only the end of the five in a row, not the end of the world. Compare that to the flight of folly that overtook the powers-that-be in Cork in the wake of the events of September 2006. Different images come to mind: babies and bathwater; a Charlton Heston-figure on a beach, only this time instead of a disfigured lady of liberty holding a torch, he comes across the relics of a Cork captain fisting Liam McCarthy into the air. “You blew it up! Ahh, damn you! Damn you all to hell, boy!”
By blowing the O’Grady-Allen template up, Cork didn’t so much create a planet of apes as a fear of a black and amber planet that would become too real.
Over the last six years Kilkenny have contested every All-Ireland, winning all but one. Cork haven’t been in even one. No one saw that coming in 2006. No one.
Of course they made progress this year. Most teams did, bar Tipp and Dublin, and next year those two will as well. It will take them a couple of years though to recover the ground they lost in 2012.
Get working on the phrase. After the Drive for Five and Henry’s Climb for Nine, we can start bracing ourselves for The Men For Ten.
