Kilkenny face journey into the unknown against Galway once again
Meaning that the Leinster final, while it may not quite be taking place in a galaxy far far away, isn’t high on your agenda. Kilkenny and Galway in Croke Park simply isn’t your concern.
Correct? Wrong.
Wrong and badly wrong, because tomorrow’s losers in Dublin 3 will be contesting an All-Ireland quarter-final in three weeks’ time. Chances are, they’ll be contesting it against one of Cork, Clare and Limerick.
If Galway lose tomorrow, then, do you really want to be facing them in an All-Ireland quarter-final? A rebound Galway, who may or may not have performed against Kilkenny and who may or may not perform in a putative All-Ireland quarter-final? So many ifs and buts there, it’s almost migraine-inducing, yet that’s the point with Galway. One doesn’t know what they’re capable of on a given day and it’s this that makes them dangerous, as Brian Cody is aware better than any other person on earth. And that’s bad enough if you’re a Cork, Clare or Limerick supporter.
If Galway win tomorrow, on the other hand... Well, do you really want to be facing their victims in an All Ireland quarter-final? One does know what Kilkenny are capable of on a given day, one knows it all too well, and this knowledge doesn’t prevent them being dangerous. And that’s much worse.
What’s more, if this isn’t the Kilkenny of 2008, it’s not the Kilkenny of 2013 either, the Kilkenny that, enervated by a pernicious combination of long-term injuries and niggling knocks, tottered from one Saturday evening to the next like an ageing supermodel on the spindliest of high heels before finally expiring on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Thurles.
While their depth of resources was diluted over the winter, they had a full and healthy pack to choose from this week, Richie Power apart, and however dismal Wexford were a fortnight ago it didn’t disguise the reality that, as ever under Cody, last year’s bread has long been ingested, digested and forgotten.
Onto the next meal. Iron focus, iron resolve. Still the king on the iron throne.
But it’s Galway tomorrow and that’ll be enough in itself for Cody. Red lights flashing, klaxons clanging. It’s as though a permanent state of cold war exists between the counties. Nothing happens for long periods but there’s always the danger it might. There are troop movements and war games and shapes thrown, and quite often when battle is joined the men in maroon amount to little more than a paper tiger. But every now and then, battle is joined, Kilkenny’s early-detection system fails them and they’re facing a full-blown, no-warning thermonuclear strike from west of the Shannon.
Tipperary put Kilkenny to the pin of their collar time and again in recent seasons, but at least Cody knows what to expect from Tipperary and therefore can plot and plan to his heart’s content. With Galway, he doesn’t, and he can’t.
There have been days when it was all too easy for Kilkenny: the 2004 qualifier and 2006 All-Ireland quarter-final in Thurles, the 2010 Leinster final. There have been days when Galway did well for long or short periods: the 2007 All-Ireland quarter-final, the 2012 drawn All-Ireland decider and the closing five minutes of the drawn game in Tullamore last year. And then there were other days altogether: the 2001 and 2005 All-Ireland semi-finals and the 2012 Leinster final. Those no-warning missile attacks. When Cody emerged from the bunker 70 minutes later, there wasn’t a building standing for miles around.
Galway remain the only county he’s met in the championship who after beating Kilkenny, have not been beaten by them next time the teams met. They’re the only county who’ve forced him to delay announcing his team until a quarter of an hour before the throw-in, as was the case for the replay in Tullamore. And tomorrow that which was his trouble comes, yet again, out of the West.
They do not bear comparison to Kilkenny versus Tipperary, these clashes. Kilkenny/Tipp has heavy lifting and high opera in equal measure and in nine red-letter meetings since 2009 has disappointed only once. Kilkenny/Galway has plenty of heavy lifting, rarely ascends to high opera and frequently disappoints. Some of it is little more than posturing; Jackie Tyrrell, Iarla Tannian and Andy Smith will all make a point tomorrow of letting it be known they’re there and ready for anything.
To produce the most unsurprising of surprises the underdogs will require a superior scoring return to their output against Kilkenny last year. First time around in the semi-final they’d posted 2-16 by the 65th minute, managing 1-17 by the 70th six days later. Kilkenny finished with 3-22 and 3-19 respectively. Something of that order tomorrow will constitute a fair target for Galway to reach.
Talking of targets, Joey Holden is an obvious one for Anthony Cunningham. He wasn’t tested against Wexford. He will be here, almost certainly by the challengers repeating their opening gambit from the 2012 Leinster final. An exhaustively choreographed dance draws everyone else out of the way, leaving Joe Canning one on one on the edge of the square, and in comes an identified flying object. Round. Rimmed.
Might the Galway forward line be too big? The reader has often heard of a hurler — it’s always a big lad, never a small lad — deemed “not to have good use of himself”. Galway have Joe Canning and Jonathan Glynn and Cathal Mannion, he of the 12-minute hat-trick against Dublin, and if Conor Cooney were available, they’d have him too. And the champions’ defence is not physically imposing, Tyrrell and Kieran Joyce aside.
Yet when Galway’s comeback last year forced Kilkenny to return to first principles for the replay — Tyrrell from centre-back to the corner, Brian Hogan in at six, Conor Fogarty reconstituted to play the part of a draught excluder at midfield — the gaps were closed off and Cunningham’s men didn’t possess the craft to pilot a way through. Have they managed in the meantime to synthesise a degree of attacking coherence, a harmony between kicking down the door and sneaking in the back? The answer will define their summer.
A potentially decisive factor tomorrow is the presence of Michael Fennelly, who’ll sit in front of Joyce and make the occasional bulldozing run forward. It was not a coincidence that the late madness in Tullamore 13 months ago occurred in the absence of Fennelly; Kilkenny didn’t have their big dog on the porch. If it was, Richie Power who helped them over the finishing line in the All-Ireland series, it was Fennelly who helped get them within sprinting distance of the line in the first place.
This being Kilkenny/Galway, usual strictures apply. Kilkenny should; Galway could. To venture anything more definitive than that is to chance one’s arm. Galway have taught us not to try.
PS: Cody retired from teaching last week. He now has time to take hurling seriously.
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