When the going gets tough...

And so Championship 2012 ended with the most predictable winners imaginable after the least predictable journey imaginable.

But last Sunday threw up some points of discussion nonetheless. Here are a few of them.

Kilkenny’s New Peaks...

If last year’s All Ireland final was Brian Cody’s finest moment, this year’s wasn’t far behind. Every box was ticked, every detail accounted for. He saw Galway coming – as well he might have at the third time of asking — and his counter-insurgency measures routed them. The time spent with the engine idling during the three-week break had sharpened the champions’ appetite, whetted their thinking and oiled their reflexes. There were no big meetings or dramatic tactical ventures. Having concluded that the memory of the Leinster final had made them wary on September 9, they made a point of trying to forget about Galway and to remember why they themselves were the team they were in the first place. Pay no attention to that Cunningham man behind the curtain!

The puckout strategy was more considered; no aimless hanging balls for the Galway defence to gobble up this time. The switch to zonal marking worked out too; it was as though the drawn game had banished the spectre of the Leinster final and allowed Kilkenny to see the Galway forwards for what they were. And they got their match-ups picture-perfect. The skyscraping Walter Walsh on the smaller Johnny Coen; the diminutive Richie Hogan, with his sellotape first touch and low centre of gravity, on the bigger and more athletic Kevin Hynes.

That burst of 1-6 without reply midway through the first half was as good as anything Kilkenny have produced under Cody, with Richie Power’s flick for his goal, a signature Black and Amber touch. The only Kilkenny man on the pitch who could have finished it as neatly, Henry Shefflin included, was Richie Hogan. The only Kilkenny man on the planet who could have finished it more neatly was DJ Carey.

In their 17 previous outings since the 2008 All Ireland final, only once had the winners bettered their tally of 3-22. And so they beat on, boats with the current, borne ceaselessly into new futures they script for themselves.

What Cody Did Next ...

A couple of Tuesday’s papers got busy speculating, in the way the Tuesday papers do, about the manager’s intentions. Reading the man’s mind is always a dangerous business, not least because he consistently claims that at this time of year he doesn’t know it himself, but judging by his performance at the pre-replay media event in Langton’s an imminent departure will be a surprise.

Possibly because the media posse was smaller than normal, this was a Cody rarely seen. Relaxed, expansive, chatty, generous to Joe Canning on the “unsportsmanlike” hoohah. All questions were taken on board, considered and answered, often at length. It was as if the very fact of taking the road less travelled this summer had energised him as opposed to enervating him. He is certainly no Alexander the Great, sobbing because there are no new worlds left to conquer. With Cody, next year is always another peak to be scaled. A new Kilkenny team has to be built over the course of the coming seasons. What else would the man possibly want to be doing?

Sinners and Sinned Against...

Another All-Ireland for Kilkenny. Another triumphal procession. Dog bites man. Ho very hum.

It’s only natural that the media, in addition to the hurling world at large, got bored with it all quite some time ago. But the usual accusations about Kilkenny playing on the edge and conceding too many (or not enough) frees took a darker twist of late with accusations of “lawlessness” and “poisoning the game”.

It may be worth looking at the situation from the other side of the curtain. Michael Rice’s year ended, and career threatened, in the All-Ireland semi-final. Richie Power being struck after his goal on Sunday. TJ Reid’s season terminated by a late pull that fractured his kneecap. JJ Delaney getting split, even if Cyril Donnellan was reacting to a tug.

These were aggressive fouls. These were dangerous fouls. These were the kind of fouls that would have resulted in calls for a public tribunal, or at any rate a Sunday Game investigation, had Kilkenny players authored them.

Now. See why they’ve been quietly seething this past couple of months? And where Cody was coming from after the All Ireland semi-final? No? You might try.

What Hurts, Instructs...

Defeat did not alter the fact that Galway were the revelation of the summer and Anthony Cunningham the manager of the championship. Last Sunday was, simply, a bridge too far for both of them. They had no new tricks to offer, no new cards to palm from the bottom of the deck like the other crowd had. This time they were the ones in the crosshairs.

Would Galway have been better off had they lost the drawn game by a point? Mature reflection says no. Cunningham is – has to be – playing the long game and the replay, by exposing cracks he can’t paper over, did him the kind of backhanded favour a gallant defeat first time out wouldn’t have done.

In his speech for the defence he can cite horrendous misfortune The goal that wasn’t, TJ Reid’s steps, the Canning woodwork, the Canning injury, the Skehill episode. One returns, with a sinking heart, to the Canning conundrum cited here before. When Galway win it doesn’t matter what scenic parts of the field Joe’s afternoon has taken him to; victory means he’s deemed to have “played his part”. But what in victory would have been a sublime assist from his own half-back line for David Burke’s second goal becomes in defeat the type of ball that someone else would have been better off hitting.

The first step on the path to enlightenment is to recognise that Joe isn’t the problem but the solution. It’s the guys around him who are the problem. (To repeat this column’s oft expressed preference: Canning at left-half forward. Near enough to do damage, not far enough away for irrelevance.) Crunching the numbers from the draw and replay leaves a picture leached of colour and nuance. No point from play – that most fundamental shaft in a forward’s sheaf – from four members of the Galway attack first time around. No point from play from any of the six of them last Sunday until Canning popped up with two in injury time. And 2-13 and 3-11 are neither All Ireland-winning scores nor within an ass’s roar of them. Galway got a draw last month with 15 scores; Tipperary lost in 2009 with 23 scores.

On Sunday they were what they’d been three weeks earlier, a team with ten players from the side that had collapsed against Waterford in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final. On Sunday, however, they looked it. Far from tarnishing Cunningham’s first season at the helm, in a perverse way the afternoon put a gloss on it.

Worthy runners-up. That will have to do them for now. Next year is a new peak. Cody can reassure them about that.