Cats are now playing catch-up, claims Cody

Every spring, when Glanbia renew their sponsorship of Kilkenny hurling, Cats manager Brian Cody offers a quick state-of-the-union address.

Yesterday in Nowlan Park was no different.

“There’s no doubt about it, we’re not in the top four teams anyway,” said Cody.

“I mean that, like, I’m not looking to take pressure off us by saying that. This time last year, we were the top team, we were the All-Ireland champions.

“It’s clear cut to me, the All-Ireland champions are the top team. The four semi-finalists are the top four teams. Results are definitive and that’s it.

“We failed to get there. That’s it. Like I said, we had very patchy form and that’s the way it works. The challenge for us now is to try and get up and be one of those four teams. But it’s a hell of a challenge.”

The nature of the game, and the way it’s officiated, was another topic the James Stephens club man addressed: “There appears to be a certain will there, that kind of a sort of pressure there to kind of clean up a game that doesn’t need to be cleaned up, for whatever reason.

“Do we need another card? Absolutely not. We need... Eddie Keher brought out a very good suggestion about cards. I just came across it there. It made a lot of sense, an awful lot of sense.”

Keher told John Fogarty of this newspaper that the red and yellow card system should be abolished, and Cody was loud in his praise of his old teammate’s credentials.

“It made a lot of sense. I can’t repeat it verbatim now, but you are talking about a person who has adorned the game from a hurling point of view when the game would have been considered a bit tougher, I imagine, than it is now.

“He wasn’t what you would call a physical player who was involved in skirmishes — he was an elegant, stylish player, so his thoughts would be worth listening to, I’d think.”

The Kilkenny manager instanced the dismissal of Henry Shefflin and Cork’s Patrick Horgan as errors in championship 2013.

“Henry Shefflin, we’re talking about stylish players and players who play with absolute skill, being double yellow carded for nothing. And we saw Pat Horgan, who you could class in the same vein, a very skilful player, doesn’t get involved in rough and tumble stuff either, being red carded as well.

“Both of them were rescinded. Luckily enough, Patrick got cleared to play, Henry didn’t. That’s it. I’m not whinging about it. But I was asked a question about it and that’s it.”

Cody felt it important to have Shefflin’s red card, picked up in the defeat to Cork, rescinded.

“It was obvious to me straight away that it was incorrect,” he said.

“It was only right then that the incorrect call was sort of challenged, I suppose, the powers that be upheld that challenge and it was cleared.

“From a practical point of view, there are ramifications and implications — if that happens to you a second time in 12 months, there’s an automatic lengthening of a suspension so we would have been very, very silly not to go ahead and challenge it and maybe, if the same thing were to happen this year, you’d be facing a lengthier suspension so practically it made absolute sense.”

Cody added that the Kilkenny management and players haven’t had a formal debrief to analyse what went wrong in 2013.

“I suppose we wouldn’t tie ourselves into knots over it either. There was a kind of inevitability about it in the sense we were never flowing — we won the league having lost the first two games, and we were candidates for relegation just as we were candidates to make the league final.

“Our form was never good enough to say we could end up where we wanted to be. We got knocked out at a time when we’d prefer not to be knocked out, but it’s not as if it was mysterious, or something we need to pretend to crucify ourselves over, either.

“All of us have our own thoughts on it but it’s done and dusted. There’s not a whole range of questions — ‘if we had done this, if we had done that’ — and I don’t think it would have served any great purpose if there were. We’re all back together and that’s it.”

Did the league campaign take more out of the team than anticipated?

“It’s hard to say. Possibly. It was hard won, because we had two defeats to start off and we were under pressure to win matches. The response was good, even though we could have lost to Clare and Cork, but we battled on.

“There’s no excuses — that’s not the reason we didn’t win later on. We were beaten by Dublin in the Leinster semi-final, and that drove us into further games, but everybody has to face that situation and deal with it.

“Our form was patchy and not the kind of form you need to win championships.

“Still, they had some good outings. Winning the league. Beating Tipperary in the championship. Here in Nowlan Park against Tipperary it was outstanding, every aspect of it was outstanding — neighbouring counties, provincial venue, place full to the rafters and the city full as well — and the result right for us, though obviously it wasn’t right for them.”

They start the league this Sunday against Clare, and the manager was able to rustle up an impressive list of absentees for Kilkenny — “Just off the top of my head, Michael Fennelly, Richie Power, JJ Delaney, ” — but Richie Hogan is back in training and Kieran Joyce is only temporarily absent due to his club, Rower Instioge, winning the intermediate club All-Ireland.

And Henry is back. “He’s absolutely fine,” said Cody. “There’s no injury or problem like that. Henry is available for selection.” The more things change, eh?