One more golden afternoon for greats

In the end it was hard to avoid the feeling that there was something valedictory, something end-of-era, about it all.

A balmy autumn evening and a group of players well into the autumn of their careers — in a couple of cases the post-autumn of their careers — taking a luxuriant, leisurely turn about Croke Park, babies and small children in tow. Yes, babies and small children. These are family men now and, astounding a notion though it sounds, they have lives outside hurling. And some day soon a number of them will be former intercounty players. And that realisation would have made this, if not an All-Ireland that Kilkenny could have afforded to lose, then an All-Ireland where defeat would have entailed no pointing of fingers or effigy-burning.

After the many lands they’d conquered down the years, for this last battle to have proved an Arnhem for the members of Brian Cody’s praetorian guard wouldn’t have been a shock and wouldn’t have remotely been an indictment of them. Yet there was one more golden afternoon left to them. Once more they summoned the spirits from the deep and once more the spirits answered the call. Remarkable. But, knowing these guys as we do, unsurprising.