Eoin Larkin driving on after setbacks

Eoin Larkin has had a rougher season than most, though not because of any on-field opponents. A bout of illness earlier this year means he has had to work hard to regain his fitness.

“I was back about three weeks and got glandular fever,” he says now. “That was another kick in the teeth, but thankfully I got through it.

“I was sleeping nearly three or four hours a day, then going to bed and sleeping that night. I had to take it handy and was out (of the barracks) a couple of weeks, it takes all your energy.

“In fairness (trainer) Mick Dempsey has worked with me a lot over the last while to get me back in good shape for the championship so huge credit has to go to him - things like 100 metre runs and so on, and I had a good bit of training behind me from the other years. I wasn’t actually too bad.

“I was a bit worried because it was about six or seven weeks in by the time I actually realised there was something amiss - I went to the doctor then and I was nearly a week or two on the other side when it was diagnosed.

“I trained for two or three weeks through it but I was just wrecked. I used to go home and lay on the couch or go to bed. I was just shattered.”

The James Stephens man worked himself back to fitness with his club: “I wasn’t able to run, but there was plenty of training and matches, club games and so on.

“The club games helped me, and training inside is intense enough so that brought me on an awful lot.

“I always thought ‘God, I have to get back here or I am going to be in trouble by the time the summer comes around’. There was no point going back when I was still sick as I could do myself more harm than good.

“I just took the couple of weeks and said to myself it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I was a sub. I was going to try my hardest to get back fit and get onto the team. I decided that I was going to stay going.”

The reward is Waterford today.

Larkin doesn’t think the Déise’s tactical approach is as defensive as some people seem to think: “I think they racked up a fairly good score against Dublin as well. They are defending in groups, attacking in groups is the way you could put it. Kevin Moran has a serious engine, so he’s back and forward all the time. I think it’s more the ball coming in that’s different. Waterford kind of have a different sweeper, the sweeper behind the full-back line, really.”

His memories of Waterford include the 2008 All-Ireland final, of course, when Kilkenny gave a consummate performance.

“I don’t think we hit a wide in the first half, probably Waterford didn’t play the way they could, but we played very well.

“You have to rate them (performances) in different ways but generally that was the best performance.”

Why were they so tuned in that day?

“I don’t know really. There had been a lot of talk about the three-in-a-row and no-one could do it.

“Waterford were coming up, they had Davy (Fitzgerald) over them and all this kind of stuff, everyone just tuned in that day and everything seemed to work for us. Everything we hit went over that day.

“Everyone had bundles of energy - we were all over the place - and everything just clicked that day. We stopped Cork (winning three in a row) in 2006 and we didn’t want to be stopped in 2008.

“Looking back on it now you could probably say, yeah, we knew it was coming because training was very good. When you get into the match you don’t really think about it, you just try to win the next ball, do the right thing and things like that.”

They’ve had a fair turnover from last year, icons of the game who improved their colleagues on the training field. Larkin marked Tommy Walsh “a lot”, for instance.

“There was only a couple of nights I didn’t mark him. I’d say marking him brought me on an awful lot because he’s such a good reader of the game and so fast over five or ten yards that you knew you had to be out in front of him - that was really the thing. Brian (Cody) always says careers come and go and Kilkenny still go forward. They were great players and it’s up to the rest of the lads now to step up to the plate and try to get up to that level.”

Today is another opportunity to do that.