The game, like the handshake, was played on Brian Cody's terms
4 June 2022; Conor Whelan of Galway in action against Paddy Deegan and Huw Lawlor of Kilkenny during the Leinster GAA Hurling Senior Championship Final match between Galway and Kilkenny at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
We’ve seen this Brian Cody expression before. Often too, if not in awhile. Usually kept for post All-Ireland final winning press conferences, he blows out his cheeks and arrests it with a slight grin.
It’s the look of satisfaction and the Kilkenny manager has plenty to be pleased about after defying the underdogs tag, coming into a final off the back of a campaign including two defeats.
Still, it’s unusual for him to take so much out of an honour he has now won 18 times as manager. Christening it as “a great night for Kilkenny” seemed odd and nothing like his reflections on the Leinster successes the previous two years. It may have been a response to his critics, if not a message to his opposite number.
After the final whistle, he seemed as elusive on the field as his team had been for Galway. Eventually after both men had shook plenty of other hands, Henry Shefflin approached Cody just as the cup presentation was commencing, a meeting that interrupted Leinster chairman Pat Teehan on the microphone such was the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction as Shefflin got closer to his former supremo.
And yet the gesture was briefer than Salthill, again cool and just as telling of their out-of-sorts relationship as Shefflin retreated to where the Galway camp had congregated, shaking his head.
Earlier, Paddy Deegan, county treasurer Barry Hickey, and secretary Conor Denieffe had walked over to the Galway part of the sideline to commiserate with Shefflin. It then appeared Hickey attempted to persuade Cody to make the first move with Shefflin but there was no dice.
After his Ballyhale Shamrocks’ club-mate Richie Reid received the Bob O’Keeffe Cup, the Galway manager waited in the Hogan Stand tunnel to congratulate any of the Kilkenny players he hadn’t reached on the pitch.
It was a typically classy move by Shefflin. He and Cody are winners but the latter is long past the point of caring how things look. That goes for magnamosity as it does hurling. This was a game that stunk to high heaven but like the handshake it was played on Cody’s terms. Galway weren’t allowed to breathe, the fare was coiled and congealed. Half of Kilkenny’s scores came from frees, they scored just one second-half point from play up to additional time.
“It doesn’t really matter as long as you win it,” Cody stated. “The game, once it’s out there in front of you, if you’re scoring your frees and you know TJ’s free-taking tonight was absolutely immense and was so important. So, the game can take on any kind of a stage at different times and tonight I suppose there was a relatively high free count but that happens.”
Asked about scoring just three second-half points from play, Cody remarked: “Well, I tell ya we could have got eight or nine from play and lost the game and that would have concerned me. I’m not in the slightest bit concerned about what happened because it was a night when you had to put your shoulder to the wheel, everybody had to put their shoulder to the wheel, we’re playing top class team. I thought we won by five points so that’s something.”
As Cody alluded to, Reid’s free-taking was terrific but then so were the rearguard performances of Mikey Butler and Huw Lawlor, while Eoin Murphy played his part in Galway failing to convert five goal chances.
Rueing a lack of “punch” upfront, Shefflin remarked: “Kilkenny had a few goal chances in the second half, we had them in the first half. I don’t know, I just think it was a very flat game.”
Four of them came before half-time, the first coming in the seventh minute when Murphy easily kept out Joseph Cooney’s kicked effort. The Kilkenny goalkeeper had more to do to keep out Brian Concannon’s shot a minute later after a driving Conor Cooney run.
Eoin Cody had a goal opportunity snuffed out in the 19th minute while a Reid effort from a long-range free was deemed wide in the 26th minute. Despite HawkEye being called on, the score detection data was not available.
Kilkenny led 0-11 to 0-9 at the break and never lost that advantage as Reid’s radar couldn’t have been truer in the second half with eight converted frees. Shefflin intimated frustration with James Owens’ officiating but Galway, while not leaving Kilkenny’s shoulder, were getting in their own way more than the referee.
“We got three frees in injury-time to balance it in some way,” Shefflin said of the 19-12 free count in Kilkenny’s favour. “I thought there was a few that were in some way dubious enough, there were probably frees for us that we didn’t get on the other side, but I don’t think that had a major bearing on the game whatsoever.”
T.J. Reid (0-12, 11 frees, 1 65); A. Mullen (0-4); P. Deegan (0-2); R. Leahy, B. Ryan, M. Keoghan, P. Walsh (0-1 each).
C. Cooney (0-9, 5 frees, 2 65s, 1 sideline); C. Whelan (0-4); C. Fahy (0-2); F. Burke, P. Mannion (free) (0-1 each).
Eoin Murphy; T. Walsh, H. Lawlor; M. Butler; M. Carey, R. Reid, P. Deegan; C. Fogarty, C. Kenny; A. Mullen, B. Ryan, R. Leahy; T.J. Reid, M. Keoghan, E. Cody.
W. Walsh for B. Ryan (temp 28-30); C. Delaney for M. Butler (temp 29-35+1); C. Browne for C. Kenny (h-t); W. Walsh for R. Leahy (45); P. Walsh for B. Ryan (54); J. Donnelly for M. Keoghan (60).
Éanna Murphy; D. Morrissey, Daithí Burke (c), J. Grealish; P. Mannion, G. McInerney, F. Burke; T. Monaghan, J. Coen; C. Fahy, C. Cooney, J. Cooney; C. Mannion; C. Whelan, B. Concannon.
J. Flynn for T. Monaghan (44); R. Glennon for C. Fahy (54); David Burke for J. Coen (61); G. Lee for B. Concannon (70+1).
J. Owens (Wexford).
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