Rice ready for another big tilt

LEINSTER SHC QUARTER-FINAL:

“I wasn’t long in UCC when I gave up football,” says the Kilkenny star.

“After a football match with the club at home I came back up to Cork with the top of my finger squashed and Dr Paddy Crowley of UCC wasn’t too happy with me. I was thinking I’ll have enough injuries with the hurling, I’d better cut the football adrift.”

He was right. Rice is glad the catastrophic hand injury in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final is no longer the first thing people ask him about.

“For a long time anyone I met, they were asking me ‘how’s the finger, when are you going to be back?’. And that was great, because they were encouraging me and wishing me well, but at the same time I’d have preferred, obviously, if they were just asking me about games. Now that’s happening again.”

He’s not the only member of the camp who’s had to recuperate. Manager Brian Cody is just back after heart surgery.

“He was back doing a bit of light jogging there for a while, but we’d expect him to face into the heavy stuff this week,” laughs Rice.

“No, he’s back and he’s in good fettle, looking well. And looking forward to the championship, like all of us. It was fortunate that the two lads, Martin [Fogarty] and Mick [Dempsey], were there, that they’re so experienced, and that they were happy enough to take on that mantle.”

Annexing the league title showed how seamless the transition was to their leadership.

“Outside the camp people mightn’t have the same appreciation of the lads because they mightn’t be as well known, but that certainly wouldn’t be the case within the camp. They all have different roles and Mick’s ability in terms of preparing lads physically is hugely important.

“He has great expertise when it comes to judging what lads need — he’d be very good to differentiate between what’s needed for an older player who’s had some injuries, say, and a youngster who’s just on the panel and is full of energy. And he’s open to that difference, which is also important, he works closely with the physios to work out who needs what kind of training.”

They peaked nicely for the league final against Tipperary.

“There’s probably a few more per cent in both teams,” says Rice, “But having said that it’s probably as close as you can get to a championship game.

“It reminded me of the league game we had against Tipperary back in 2009, which was another game that was significant for both teams – and for me personally, because it suggested to me that I was up to that level. The intensity in this year’s league final was good, you couldn’t take a break at any stage, but usually at the end of a season if you look back at the league final versus the All-Ireland final you’ll see a fair difference in intensity.”

Kilkenny are generally involved at the end of a season. Is that widely held expectation something to guard against? “It’s important to shut that out, though it’s not always easy. Obviously there’s no point in focusing on September if you’re losing matches in June.

“I know it’s a cliche but championship matches take on a life of their own and we’re just focused on one game: Offaly. I know people see that or hear that and say, ‘ah, a cliche’, but it’s true.”

Is the appetite there, though? People have asked that question about the Donegal footballers, but that group only has one All-Ireland: Kilkenny have been hoovering up titles for the last decade and more.

“Personally I think it is there, and I think it’s there for the team as well because there’s still that sense that you can’t relax and feel you’ve made it.

“There’s no shortage of lads keen to take the jersey — in every position. Because of that there’s a personal challenge for every player to retain the jersey, and that helps drive the hunger for the team as a whole.

“The other side of that, though, is that you don’t really know what the team’s hunger is like until the championship comes, and the serious questions are asked. You mentioned Donegal, and their game against Tyrone was a good game to see, because there was so much talk about them and their hunger and what they’d do when they played Tyrone.

“I’m sure for the players involved it was a battle to the final whistle but it seemed to me that Donegal broke Tyrone and then drove on. They [Donegal] were probably prepared to fight it out to the very end, and once you’re mentally prepared for that, then the body will bring you there.”

Is that a sense — that the opposition are broken — he’s had in games himself?

“Every now and again, maybe. Not every time. But even then it’s not a cue to relax – ‘ah, we’ve broken them now, we’re grand’.

“That’s particularly true in hurling, because we’ve seen plenty of times over the years that a team can grab a couple of goals and the momentum changes totally. In football that’s not really an option when it comes to overhauling another team, particularly with the blanket defence. A football team defending a lead with a blanket defence isn’t going to leak a couple of goals late on, whereas in hurling if you bomb the ball into the square you’ve always got a chance of a goal.”

From football back to hurling. The same sequence as UCC, long ago.