Crowning moment for King Henry the great

His manager was uncharacteristically lyrical when discussing Henry Shefflin on Saturday night in Croke Park.

Brian Cody doesn’t often reach for a Shakespearean comparison, so it was striking to hear one after Kilkenny’s win, which brought Shefflin that 10th All-Ireland medal.

“Henry’s achievement is the one to talk about,” said Cody.

“The manager is still as young as ever. The player himself gets older and it is a different thing. He is challenged in every single possible way from a physical point of view because he has gone through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with injury.”

Well, Hamlet would be nothing without its prince.

Kilkenny wouldn’t be the same without its king.

Cody didn’t wait as long to put on Henry Shefflin on Saturday night.

In the first game he first saw action on 66 minutes as a substitute, but in the replay he entered the field a good 10 minutes earlier and the contest was far from over.

The Ballyhale man has had more productive All-Irelands — only two years ago he dragged Kilkenny back into contention almost single-handedly when they were floundering against Galway in the drawn All-Ireland final — but he had an impact all the same last Saturday.

Shefflin went to centre-forward on Padraic Maher and immediately began signalling puck-out directions to Eoin Murphy, pointing out TJ Reid at left-half-forward as a target and giving Maher pause for thought: to pursue Shefflin and contest the breaks or not?

Two minutes after being introduced, Shefflin lost a ball on the right wing for a Tipperary sideline cut, but on 64 minutes he was putting in a block on an opponent in the middle of the field.

How often have we seen him do that in the last 15 years? Great players transform the game, and after Shefflin no inter-county team can carry a scoring forward who can’t, or won’t, put in a shift with a pick and shovel.

There was still time for a vital intervention on Saturday: in injury-time Shefflin won possession in the Tipperary half and processed the ball to Colin Fennelly near the opposition goal.

His clubmate hit the last score of the game to put Kilkenny three ahead.

Was that our last glimpse of the famous green helmet? He was circumspect in Croke Park on Saturday when asked about the prospect of an 11th medal.

“I don’t know, I’ll be enjoying the winter, that’ s one sure thing. It’s absolutely brilliant, we always enjoy winters when we have the All-Ireland Cup at home.

“Last winter, people would have been saying we were gone, we were finished, that was the way it was but I think there was great belief and great motivation within the panel.”

However, in August, Shefflin addressed the matter in a slightly less guarded way, when asked ahead of the All-Ireland semi-final with Limerick what the future held for him.

“I would say you probably know the answer,” Shefflin said then.

“I always say, ‘Come the end of the year’. I would think I won’t be saying that much more, to be honest. I know it’s very, very close now but I will review it at the end of the year and see what way I’m feeling.

“You’ll know the next two months, please God, or the next three months for myself and for Kilkenny and for Ballyhale are going to be important. Then I’ll look at it. I’d be a fool to say otherwise before then.”

Shefflin has been so integral to the perception of Kilkenny for so long that it’s hard to imagine them taking the field without him.

The shadow he has cast has been so great that other incredible careers have rolled along on parallel tracks to his, the most obvious example being JJ Delaney.

The full-back, the best defender this writer has seen, picked up his ninth All-Ireland senior medal on Saturday night and marked the occasion with an intervention destined to become known to future generations simply as The Hook — yet the headlines go to Henry this morning.

It’s almost impossible to imagine Brian Cody sending out a team without either of them, which may be the reason questions were being asked over the weekend about the manager’s appetite for 2015.

Granted, it would take a fool, or perhaps an adept phone-tapper, to guess Brian Cody’s intentions for next year.

If, as seems likely, Shefflin and another couple of veterans step down, the challenge for next year will be slightly different.

Will the manager seek to create yet another team around the likes of Kieran Joyce, Padraig Walsh, John Power and Colin Fennelly?

Does he want to? To build or not to build? That may be the question.