Cats face a challenging campaign, warns Brian Cody

Brian Cody has flatly dismissed Kilkenny’s tag as favourites to win their fourth Division 1 title in a row and warned the All-Ireland champions have “a challenging league ahead”.

Between retirements, Ballyhale Shamrocks’ All-Ireland club final involvement and injuries, Kilkenny are currently without 13 of the 2014 panel as they prepare for their trip to face Cork this Saturday.

When it was pointed out that his team were still favourites with the bookies to win the competition, Cody said: “For the National League? Have a look at an alternative and put in a few bob there.”

Cody admitted Kilkenny are at a disadvantage, having withdrawn from the Walsh Cup due to the untimely death of Lester Ryan’s father, and with so many players missing.

“It gives them (Cork) a great advantage, no doubt about that and that’s not just saying that to take pressure off us. We obviously had a plan for our pre-league match situation, to use it for new players and bring along others, but that opportunity is gone.

“We are going to be short a huge amount of the players who would have played last year and played last September from the team that will play Cork next weekend.

"We are down an awful lot of players. That’s fine and not something I would ever be complaining about.

“Due to very difficult times and tragedies we had no option but not play in the Walsh Cup. We respect that and we have to respect our situation and the families we found ourselves involves with.

“Those matches proved very beneficial to us last year. We’ve had no opportunity to play any match at all before next Saturday night. That’s not by choice — that’s just the way it panned out for us. We’re going into a challenging league, for sure.”

The James Stephens man outlined the Cats’ injury problems: “Lester is back training with us. That’s great to see. He’s obviously had a very, very tough time but he’s back in training.

“The reality is that we have the Shamrocks players — two Fennellys, TJ Reid, Henry Shefflin, Joey Holden — they’re obviously out of the equation.

“Richie Power is out through injury, John Power had a hernia operation, Eoin Larkin had a groin operation last week, he’s gone. I was hoping I could stop soon!

“Richie has irritated cartilage in his knee. Last year it was posterior cruciate damage — hopefully it won’t be as long but he’s going to be out of the equation for a while.”

In a wide-ranging discussion at the launch of the Glanbia sponsorship of Kilkenny GAA, Cody said he didn’t “think too much” about the Hurling 2020 proposals, but added: “The committee put in a lot of work and there’s good people on it. I’m not going to sit here and knock their proposals.”

Regarding the proposals, he said: “If you were standing on the sideline and the player got a second yellow card and you could bring on a player, sure every manager would like that, if you happened to be in that situation.

“If you give a person the opportunity to focus completely on how we can improve hurling or grow hurling and develop the game throughout the country (as director of hurling), that certainly would have to be good.”

The Kilkenny boss was less sure of some proposals such as replaying a drawn All-Ireland final the following Saturday night.

“Six days... it’s a big ask, to be fair. I understand why, because (three weeks) prolongs the thing, but it’d be a tough ask because you see the player after the All-Ireland and they’re almost physically and mentally spent.

"A top class game like an All-Ireland final, it’s tough going, and for players it’s about recovery, and you’d spend the week recovering. Ideally you wouldn’t want to see them playing again the following Saturday.

“Two weeks is probably the ideal time. You could say that it’s the same for both teams, and that’s fair enough, but for players to recover properly, that’d be a big ask.

“The problem is you’re eating into the club season, and the club scene needs to be looked after properly.”

Cody would favour tightening up the time between an All-Ireland final and semi-final, however.

“It’s a long time, it can be five weeks between the All-Ireland semi-final and the final, surely the thing could be tightened up.

“Everyone needs to get together, clubs, authorities whoever they are — taking bits and pieces in isolation is probably not the best way to approach anything. You need to pull the whole thing together and get all the vested interests together.

"The reality is that club competitions are run differently in different counties. That’s part of the bigger picture as well. But it has to be a priority, to maximise the opportunity for clubs to play meaningful games in a meaningful season.”

Overall, however, Cody feels hurling is in a “very healthy state”.

He said: “Why would we need to think there needs to be massive change? I’d say that because it is in such a very healthy state — everyone mightn’t agree, but I think it is — the quality has been massive.”