Hogan hopeful Cats won’t be caught napping

ALL these weeks later, it still hurts.

Anyone thinking that Kilkenny’s league final defeat at the hands of Dublin had been long forgotten is wrong, frankly. Just ask Cats captain Brian Hogan.

“You never want to lose a game but the days of taking Dublin for granted are long gone, they’ve been getting stronger and stronger — there’s a good core of lads there and they have plenty of good minors and U21s coming through,” he said.

“They have enough hurling for anyone, so it’s not a case we were shocked that day, though we were certainly caught on the hop.

“What was a concern to us really was our own performance. Looking back, we were missing a lot of key guys and that’s not making excuses — after all, you’re trying to build the team the whole time — but you can’t maybe expect to be on top of your game for nine whole months of the year or whatever it is. Dublin were hungrier than us that day. They tore into us and we had no response and players know that themselves.

“We certainly knew it ourselves after the game, but it wasn’t panic stations or anything after it.

“We looked at what went wrong to try to rectify it, but that was it.”

That clear? The obituarists writing the death notice for this Kilkenny team look to have been a bit premature, to say the least. Hogan points out that he and his teammates don’t lose the run of themselves whatever the result.

“We’ve been around long enough not to be happy with the way we played.

“There were no big emergency meetings or anything, Brian [Cody] would trust us not to get carried away. He’d have emphasised that we were lucky to get a draw with them in the league, so it wasn’t that we lost to a poor team.

“We knew where we didn’t perform and our feeling was that at least it wasn’t the championship and that we could get ourselves right for the championship.”

They did, putting a fair beating on Dublin in the Leinster final rematch. Hogan nods towards a handy quartet who returned for that game.

“I don’t want to take away from Dublin, and they could only play what’s in front of them, but missing Henry [Shefflin], Tommy [Walsh], Michael Fennelly and Richie Power... any team missing four senior players will struggle, but against Dublin we weren’t allowed to hurl. They had a game plan and it went well, they stopped us and we couldn’t get a foothold in the game.

“When the senior guys came back there was more cuteness, more power — they’re probably a bit more seasoned. It goes without saying that you’d miss lads like that, and maybe some of the lads who played weren’t 100% either.”

Fair enough. Waterford are in the opposite corner, and Hogan groans when you mention the expectation of a Kilkenny-Tipp All-Ireland final.

“That’s lethal. You hear it everywhere, it’s in the papers, and the likes of Tony Browne and Brick Walsh aren’t coming up to make up the numbers on Sunday. They’ve one burning ambition left, for an All-Ireland, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get there.

“It’ll be a serious battle. We need to realise that earlier than the day itself, because on the day it’s too late. We’ve had good battles with them over the years. We know what to expect.

“It’s been an ideal preparation for them — it’s mad the way they’re being written off, a team that’s been around so long. It’s rare that a team comes to Croke Park pressure-free, if you like, and they’ll be able to go out and hurl with total abandon.

“It was really impressive from Waterford to bounce back from that Munster final defeat. It’s not easy to pick yourself up after a loss like that and it shows you the character in that group that they were able to come out and fight the way they did against Galway. They were the hungrier team and they bounced back. They’ll take the game to us.”