Eoin Cody hopes injury-free run will see him return to his best

8 June 2024; Eoin Cody of Kilkenny celebrates after scoring his side's first goal during the Leinster GAA Hurling Senior Championship final match between Dublin and Kilkenny at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile

Eoin Cody admits he’s not meeting the high standards he sets himself but hopes an injury-free run will see him hit his straps in Kilkenny’s July 6 All-Ireland SHC semi-final.

Nominated for the hurler of the year award last season, Cody scored 1-1 in Saturday’s Leinster SHC final having produced 1-3 in their group meeting three weeks previous before but in between those games managed just a point against Wexford.

The 2023 All-Star suffered an ankle injury in the opening provincial game against Antrim that ruled him out for the Galway and Carlow matches. However, he is not making excuses for what he perceives as underwhelming personal performances.

“It’s been difficult. I’ve had injuries but hadn’t missed a championship game before. I had missed training and it was something I’d never been used to. It was mental more than physical different.

"I am probably not too happy with where I am yet. Three weeks of full, hard training before the next game, I’ll be able to push myself and hopefully get to the levels I need to be for the team.

“I just know what I’m capable of and contributing to the team. I have my own standards but I’ll get there yet. Every game has a life of its own. I won’t get too much bogged with it either.”

It was Cody’s assertion in 2023 that Kilkenny didn’t get enough kudos for their regular dominance of the Leinster SHC. He maintains that belief, intimating they are the second best team in the country.

“The last number of years, it’s been a Leinster and a Munster team in an All-Ireland final. Leinster have always come out. That’s always the narrative (Leinster is weaker) but five-in-a-row in Leinster it’s only happened three or four times.

“As I said last year, I don’t think we get enough credit for the consistency in this group of players. Obviously, we’re not a Munster team and we can’t do anything about that but we’ll always be there or thereabouts.

“We’ve come up against a great Limerick team the last couple of years but we’ll always back ourselves and we don’t know need anybody from the outside telling us what we’re good and what we’re not good at.”

The 23-year-old took heart from how he and the other Kilkenny forwards hunted and hassled Dublin at the source of their running game on Saturday.

“They have their system, their way of playing, and we really got on top of it and studied it. We knew they were going to do, we knew what we wanted to do and we counterattacked that especially in the forwards.

“It comes from their puck-outs, that’s their game, it really evolves from their puck-outs and they start their running game. It was up to us forwards to stop them doing that and we were very proud what we did as six forwards in the first half especially.”

As for his early goal, he admits he was in two minds before scoring it.

“I always do like to go for goal and I probably get a lot of stick for not passing the ball and I knew somebody was outside me and was saying (to myself) that man was probably in the best position and went to give it but then I saw no-one.

“I think Mossie (Keoghan) might have been outside me alright but he was one or two steps too far behind then. I went to give it to him, I think the Dublin back saw it and then it opened up for me and I just had to hit it before I overcarried it.”