Michael Fennelly: Leinster is not as competitive as Munster, Kilkenny are lucky that way
FUND RAISERS: Donal O'Sullivan and Michael Fennelly supporting the O'Connell's GAC Sponsored cycle from Caherciveen to Tullyallen.
Did the Wexford result solve all black and amber ails? Are Kilkenny back on track after a single victory?
Michael Fennelly is of the view that the wheels never came off the track in the first instance. And before you accuse him of such, the eight-time All-Ireland winner is absolutely not ignorant to the size and scale of the Salthill skewerings over the past two months.
In the case of the 18-point League laceration, Fennelly felt hurling observers got too “caught up” in an early March scoreline. In the case of the more recent 15-point championship rout, he admits to not being “massively concerned” at how abjectly Kilkenny opened their Leinster campaign.
The subsequent five-goal whacking of Wexford dismissed all notions that Kilkenny would, for the first time in the short history of the Leinster round-robin, finish outside the province’s top three.
This Sunday’s spin to O’Connor Park offers further opportunity to put further distance between themselves and those sobering Salthill affairs.
Fennelly is in no way attempting to bury his head at what those Galway beatings so clearly highlighted, but he just never felt any urge to reach for the panic button in the wake of either hammering.
“To put a finger on it, preparation the first day was difficult. Stayed the night before in Galway for a game that was at 5pm, waiting around all day is never good prep for any team. There was sickness in the camp, as well, which can be very difficult,” Fennelly began.
“Then the second visit to Salthill, I was tipping Kilkenny to win. Everyone was expecting a response. The older cohort under Brian [Cody], there would be a reaction. Derek didn't get that, unfortunately.
“Galway, to give them credit, played quite well. Sending off didn't help. Salthill is a very difficult place to go. We don’t have a good record up there.
“So, there's a couple of things like that, and I think people are reading into it too much, to be honest. I, personally, wasn't massively concerned. I knew we had a few challenges ahead, but Leinster is quite different to Munster. It is not as competitive as Munster, we are probably lucky that way.
“You don't become a bad team overnight. The League is the League, people get caught up on it and, unfortunately, we didn't get the bounce we were expecting in the first game [in Leinster], but there are four other games after, so let's not get caught up in one game.”
What the second Salthill outing so clearly demonstrated is Kilkenny’s ongoing style of play conflict.
The way they’d like to hurl and the way the black and amber has always operated - direct - is, on its own, not conducive to the modern game.
Successfully blending a short-passing game with the more traditional approach has not yet been mastered by Derek Lyng’s side, even if Fennelly was encouraged by what he saw at Nowlan Park against Wexford.
“When the ball came into our defence, Mikey Carey, in particular, he nullified Lee Chin. But any time the ball broke, our backs were on it. We built from deep against Wexford and did well doing so, players looked for space and pulled off some good scores.
“You have to be dynamic, and sometimes the short-passing, if it breaks down, looks bad and people are giving out. But if you are going direct, the likelihood is the opposition will have someone filtering back and you’ll be outnumbered.
“You have to have common sense in your approach. Patience too. There have been changes to the team and they are still trying to figure out who are the best 15. Cian Kenny pushing up to the forwards the last day, with John Donnelly suspended, worked quite well. He can be a playmaker in attack, while Killian Doyle, who went to midfield, also got on so much ball.
“There's an awful lot of development that will happen between now and the end of the round-robin, so it'll be interesting to see where that ends up.”
The three-time All-Star identifies Leinster final involvement as a baseline target in the weeks ahead. As for a record-equaling seventh straight Leinster crown, there were no grand predictions, not when Galway have improved “dramatically” from their “dismal” 2025.
Having served as Performance Lead for the Kilkenny academy system in 2024 & ‘25, Fennelly would be closely in tune with underage black and amber matters.
From the team that started against Wexford, the aforementioned Killian Doyle was the sole graduate from the 2022 All-Ireland U20 winning team.
That 2022 success stands as the county’s sole All-Ireland at that age-grade going right the way back to 2008. Fennelly’s verdict is that Kilkenny are doing “only okay” at underage.
“We have them coming maybe every two or three years where there's little green shoots. That is positive, but we don't have them coming every single year. Back in our generation, they seemed to come very, very quickly, a couple of years on the trot.
“Back in our generation, we picked off one or two players every year when the conveyor belt was narrowing. Limerick seem to have done the same, but it'll be difficult to see them picking off too much more now and they do need another cohort to come through.
“It is just cycles. There's a false pretence there around academies and development squads. Development squads are to add on a couple of percent onto players, but you are not going to jump 30-40% in an academy, the time is not there. The club is key to all this. If the clubs aren't healthy, you are in trouble.”
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