Cody: It’s good to be a bit passionate

When Brian Cody settled down with the press last week in Langton’s he looked relaxed.

At ease with himself.

Hardly surprising given the amount of pre-All-Ireland press events he’s faced — 13, counting this replay.

His side’s lengthy dominance furnished one of the more interesting questions of the evening, in fact, and one of the more illuminating answers. When Cody was asked if he felt some elements in the media had tired of Kilkenny’s success, he flipped the query back at the questioner.

“By asking that question I presume you think you know yourself, otherwise it wouldn’t be a question you’d come up with. It’d be hard to imagine that decent, honest-to-goodness people like yourselves would ever tire of people going out to do their best. It’s understandable in every sport that people like change — people were raving over Donegal and Mayo in the football final because it wasn’t Dublin or Kerry. That’s fine. That’s the reality of sport. People look for change and they think it’s progress when different teams come in. Maybe it is, and that’s fine, but it isn’t too serious if certain sections of the media think that as long as the people concerned with all aspects of the game aren’t pressurised by that.”

There’s enough pressure for everyone as things stand. Cody was asked about his brief contretemps with Galway boss Anthony Cunningham near the end of the drawn game and he was keen to set it in context.

“That was what, about a minute to go in the All-Ireland final and we were a point ahead and obviously an incident happened where they were going to get an opportunity to get a draw in the game. There were 81,000-plus people at the game, animated and passionate, Kilkenny people roaring one thing and Galway people roaring another thing. If the two managers were going to be able to (say), ‘Sure lads whatever happens, happens’, it’d be a very strange thing.

“We’d be better off up in the stand, I’d say myself. We were surelyanimated and surely passionate about the thing because it was a huge savage place to be, call it what you like. That was it. There’s no big mystery about that. Both of us have a reasonable understanding of the game, we played the game at that level, we have experience of being out there as players as well in that same situation. It’s a good thing to be a bit passionate.”

The Kilkenny man clearly didn’t think referee Barry Kelly made the right call in awarding that late free, though he wasn’t interested in revving up any controversy about the decision. “I’m not going to revisit that because it was the last free of the game, so obviously it’s going to be the most talked-about free, the last thing that happens. A simple focus on that one and you could go back and revisit other calls as well.

“The referee went out to do his best, the players went out to do their best and that’s all you can ever expect from anybody.

“The fact that I didn’t think it was a foul isn’t important because I have no control over it.”

Like everybody else in the stadium, the Kilkenny manager had to stand and watch Galway’s Joe Canning drill over the equaliser.

The Kilkenny boss rates Canning highly.

“Joe is a huge player for Galway. He’s a huge inspiration. For the supporters, he lifts the team, he lifts the supporters. I would accept that.

“The fact that Joe got, what was a very good goal as well, it was very much an individual goal. He got it and when he got the ball you wouldn’t be thinking, ‘God there’s a goal on here’ because it didn’t appear to most observers that there would be a goal on there

“But that’s the measure of the ability of the man, he created thatopportunity for himself and it was a kind of an inspirational goal alright and him being an inspirational player.”

Big scores, big players, big games. There’s only one place to see them in September, he says.

“At the start of the year everyone who sees themselves as potentially having a chance of getting to the final — you think, ‘My God, if we could get to the final’.

“It’s the ultimate and that’s the way it is for us, and for Galway, I’m sure.

“It’s easy to understand being hungry for that, I think.

” There couldn’t be a mystery to that — the challenge is great, it’s what we do, the battle is there and you look forward to it. “It’d be strange if that hunger were diluted at all.”