A time of flux for a new breed of Cats

SOMETHING strange happened at Croke Park last Thursday week. Five points up and sucking diesel approaching half-time in the All-Ireland club final, O’Loughlin Gaels were blown out of it in the second half and eventually lost by 12 points to Clarinbridge. In doing so they became the third Kilkenny team to lose an All-Ireland club final in recent weeks.

Not very Kilkennyesque, you’ll agree.

Something even stranger happened in Salthill the previous Sunday. Nine points up after an early two-goal blast, Brian Cody’s team proceeded to lose the next 48 minutes by 4-11 to 0-5, an 18-point swing. Reducing the damage to arrears of four points by the final whistle amounted to putting lipstick on an unprepossessing pig.

Again, not very Kilkennyesque. Not remotely Kilkennyesque.

Not that anyone can argue that the Galway defeat, which arrived on top of the Walsh Cup defeat to a weakened Dublin, wasn’t coming. In their previous two National League outings, at home to Cork and Wexford, Kilkenny had been in control at the midway stage before failing to kick on in the second half. Cork very nearly made them pay for it; Wexford, with more modest ambitions, were happy simply to have kept the scoreline respectable. Either way it wasn’t the kind of occurrence that had been witnessed at Nowlan Park two years ago when Kilkenny were subjecting all comers, Cork and Tipp included, to arcane and bloody human sacrifice rituals and when a commanding half-time lead was the springboard for an even more commanding result.

This is easily explained. People puzzled by Kilkenny’s form shouldn’t be. Two years ago the Noresiders were on the cusp of four in a row and immortality. They reached the end of the road on September 6 2009, to be overhauled by Tipp and Father Time, 12 months later. The 15 that face Waterford tomorrow?

They’re still the Kilkenny team. But not that Kilkenny team.

The reconstruction has begun. Seasons turn, players age, teams wither. Derek Lyng retired. Michael Kavanagh and Noel Hickey are inevitably not much longer for the inter-county world; how could they be? Tommy Walsh’s form is, uniquely for him, on the floor. PJ Ryan’s ineffectiveness last September made the acquisition of a new goalkeeper a priority, one not realised in Galway a fortnight ago.

Henry Shefflin — well, who knows? Change and decay in all around I see, as the hymn has it.

It scarcely needs to be pointed out that Brian Cody, to whom flux is the staff of managerial life, will not be afraid to redecorate the room. What does need to be stressed, though, is that the new chairs and sofas will be nothing like as comfortable or as lavishly upholstered as the ones now reaching the end of their lifespan.

Consider the items of furniture Kilkenny’s underage production line has gifted Cody during his tenure.

1998: Michael Kavanagh. 1999: Henry Shefflin. 2000: Eddie Brennan, Noel Hickey. 2001: JJ Delaney. 2002: Martin Comerford, Derek Lyng. 2003: Tommy Walsh. 2004: Cha Fitzpatrick. 2005: Eoin Larkin, Jackie Tyrrell. 2006: Richie Power. 2007: Brian Hogan (ignoring his sole previous championship outing against Wexford in the ill-starred 2004 Leinster semi-final). 2008: TJ Reid. 2009: Richie Hogan.

There are medium-sized African countries with smaller GDP. And how much better it was for Kilkenny, moreover, to have one starlet emerging every year than a bunch at the same time. Limerick folk will agree.

Here’s another thing. The side beaten by Galway in that crazy 2005 All-Ireland semi-final, the county’s last championship defeat for five years, featured Jackie Tyrrell, Brian Hogan, Cha Fitzpatrick, Aidan Fogarty, Michael Rice and Richie Power on the bench. That was the bones of a new team there and then. The side beaten by Tipp six months ago had no such treasures in the wings.

The county’s strike rate with underage talent over the past 12 years is both unsustainable and unrepeatable. The surprise will not be if Kilkenny are reduced to “merely” two or three All-Ireland victories this decade. The surprise will be if they’re not. Much — perhaps too much — has been written about the county’s development squads. A lot of it missed the point; Tommy Walsh and Cha Fitzpatrick, for instance, were halfway to stardom long before the establishment of the squad system. Yet the reason the system worked is that its motives were unimpeachable. It sought, and still does, to identify promising youngsters in every club, coach them and send them home better players.

It wasn’t elitist but democratic. It wasn’t top down but bottom up. Nobody wins unless everyone wins.

The problem comes when what we might term a quirk of the local birthrate means that the best of the young talent born within the space of, say, a three-year period comes not from the traditional powerhouses but less prominent clubs. That’s what has happened in Kilkenny. Only eight of the 30 who started on the All-Ireland-winning minor outfits of 2008 and 2010 hailed from senior clubs. The rest were sourced from intermediate and junior clubs.

Inevitably in the way of things, some of these youngsters will be heard of again. Equally inevitably, a higher proportion than usual will, as a direct result of their provenance, not be.

The implications are obvious. In the long run this spread of young talent will help clubs to help themselves and Kilkenny hurling will be a healthier, more competitive place for having a clutch of junior and intermediate outfits with realistic aspirations of working their way up the ladder. In the short term, however, the county senior team will feel the effects of a reduction in the pool of potential intercounty candidates accustomed to a diet of high-grade club action. The days of champagne and lobster could not last. Brian Cody always realised that. It’s time everyone else realised it too.

Picture: Kilkenny players warm up before Walsh Cup Final against Dublin on February 27 (SPORTSFILE)