Dublin ‘manufactured hurlers’ tag condescending, insists Cody

Kilkenny manager Brian Cody has dismissed descriptions of Dublin as manufactured hurlers as "condescending" and "completely wrong".

Following a heavy defeat at the hands of Tipperary in last Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final, Dublin were described as manufactured hurlers in some quarters, but Cody rejected that description yesterday.

“I certainly would consider it that, because the same people were saying six months before that they were capable of winning the All-Ireland final, so it was a huge change in how people looked upon them,” he said.

“I would say it’s certainly condescending, call it what you like. I would consider Dublin to be a top team, an absolute top team. I’ve been saying this for a long time, probably before anyone else was saying it.

“I don’t know, they performed badly on the day as many teams have done before, and the same level of remark wasn’t passed upon other teams who have also failed to perform in given situations.

“To me they have outstanding players and have proven over the past couple of years exactly the quality they have. There is nobody questioning their natural ability over the past couple of years whereas it’s easy enough to hit them with that now, but it’s completely wrong as far as I’m concerned.”

Cody said Kilkenny will pick from almost a full panel for Sunday week’s All-Ireland semi-final against Limerick, with Michael Fennelly the sole doubt.

“Everyone is grand, yeah. It’s an ongoing thing [Fennelly] and it has been for a while. It’s good now at the moment and he obviously played against Offaly and it came against him again. He’s been out and has been out for five or six weeks.

“It hadn’t been felling too good so he spent four or five weeks without doing anything, but he’s back in full training.

“We don’t know yet exactly whether he will be playing or not playing. All we can do is monitor him in training and he’s had a good run for the past couple of weeks now so we’ll see how it goes.”