Making way for the new Power generation

IT’S A generational thing, this GAA business. Only recently, this newspaper did a feature on the sons and nephews of the various members of the great Kerry team of the 70’s/80’s, who are now either already playing with the Kingdom or knocking on the door. The same could be said in Kilkenny.

A look through the Kilkenny senior panel throws up the names Ryan, Delaney (on the double), Larkin, Power, Cody, O’Dwyer, all of whom have ties to Kilkenny teams past.

In the recent All-Ireland semi-final win over Cork, however, the only one directly related to those from the 80’s was centre-forward Richie Power, son of the man of the same name.

Last week, for the launch of the Kilmacud Sevens, the annual pre-All-Ireland final tournament that has now become such a must-see fixture on the GAA calendar, Richie senior was in Croke Park – familiar territory for an old Cat.

“Yes,” he grins, “But it’s a very different place to when I was playing here, in the 80’s and the 90’s, it’s a fantastic stadium now. When you consider the weather we’ve had this year, all the rain we’ve got week in and week out – they had five games here recently in probably the worst weekend of rain we’ve ever seen, in Dublin in particular, but the field stood up to it, a huge compliment to everyone involved here.”

Big as the change has been off the field, the fantastic modern superstructure, most important to the actual participants on All-Ireland final day is the field itself, and before this latest development, the surface – well though it was maintained — wasn’t actually the best.

“When you go back to when we used to come out at the corner of the Hogan Stand, and you’d look out across the field, it was all humps and hollows. I was actually in Dublin when the new field was being done, and I came out to Croke Park for a walk, came in the corner of the Hogan Stand and just walked out onto the middle of the field. It was a real spring day in February, sunny, cold but crisp; I rang my daughter from the middle of the pitch, told her where I was, and she thought I was joking her!

“It was amazing. Eventually a fella came over to me, told me I shouldn’t be in there, and I left, but it was just one of those days when I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

Nevertheless, humps and hollows or not, Kilkenny and Richie enjoyed some fantastic days in the old Croke Park, in 1982 and 83 in particular, the years when he won his two treasured All-Ireland medals, two big against-the-odds wins over Cork. “We came into ‘82 with no-one giving us a chance; I remember getting on the train in Kilkenny and we were wondering why we were even bothering to come up, but everything went right for us on the day, everything fell into place and we won.

“Again in 83 we were lucky to get out with a win, but those were great occasions. There always has to be a winner and a loser, but the All-Ireland final is always a great occasion, great build-up to it, and you’d always be hoping for a good day weather-wise.”

HOPEFULLY that will be the case on Sunday also, but given what’s at stake for the two teams in the 2008 final, nothing, surely, can rain on this parade.

Waterford, the Cinderella side, finally getting to the ball after 45 years of futility, Kilkenny going for the fabled three-in-a-row. Even in Kilkenny, where hurling feet are firmly nailed to the floor, that’s become a talking-point.

“Yes, people do talk about it, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. It is an amazing statistic that Kilkenny have never won a three-in-a-row on the field, especially with the success we’re after having in the last 30 or 40 years.

“We were beaten by Wexford in ‘84 after winning the All-Ireland in ‘82 and ‘83, then I was involved with Kilkenny in ‘91, beaten by Tipperary (Richie’s last year), but Kilkenny won again in ‘92 and ‘93, beaten then in ‘94, so I’ve been involved in two attempts to win it before. It’s never that big an issue, but this bunch of players have already been involved in a three-in-a-row attempt, in 2004; if it happens this time, it happens, but they’re a fabulous panel of players, and I’d say no-one could say on the Monday, if Kilkenny happen to win, that they don’t deserve it.”

Manager Brian Cody especially deserves to have this on his coaching CV, given what he’s done for Kilkenny.

“Definitely, yes. I think this has been our eighth final appearance in the last 10 years, since he took over; it’s a huge achievement, probably the best decade in Kilkenny hurling, ever.”

The best team also?

“I would have rated the Kilkenny team of the 70’s very, very highly, but to compare this team to them is very hard to do, things have changed so much. You have second chances now, backdoors, where in the 70’s it was straight knockout, and in that time you had a great Wexford team; then you had Offaly in the 80’s, a fabulous side, so there was huge competition even in Leinster.

“But this team, you’d have to say, has to be up there with the greatest teams that ever came out of Kilkenny, maybe the best.”

Definitely the best, if they win?

“That’s it; the strange thing about it is that a lot of these players still have a few very good years left in them, and I know a lot of other counties mightn’t be too happy to hear that! But it’s true, a lot of them are still young. Hurling is fierce strong in Kilkenny at the moment, and that’s shown again this year with the minors, U-21’s and intermediates also in the All-Ireland final (the intermediates won last weekend), it’s very healthy at the moment.”