Results don’t lie: this has been the toughest season of Brian Cody’s time in charge of Kilkenny. Losing twice to Wexford, home and away, league and championship; losing to Waterford for the first time in 58 years; gone from the championship before the quarter-final stage; not playing well. All of that is clear for everyone to see. Where do they go from here? Where does he go from here?
Second question first: he should stay and he will stay. Knowing him for as long as I do he will absolutely relish the challenge of building a team again. I saw that at the beginning of 2014 when Kilkenny were coming off the back of a bad year, people were saying that hurling had changed and that Kilkenny had been left behind; all of that stuff just drove him on. He was convinced that we had the players to win the All-Ireland again and we won the next two.
The other question revolves around the players at his disposal. The brutal reality is that Kilkenny don’t have the same depth in their squad as they once had and I think that forced them to try a different way of playing. Brian Cody has always been very traditional in his thinking and in his approach but that was easier when he had players who could win their individual battles all over the field and when Kilkenny had plenty of ball-winners in attack.
Against Limerick and Waterford, Kilkenny played two in the full-forward line with Walter Walsh playing deep, even dropping into his half-back line under puck-outs. They tried to create space and work the ball up the field. That style of play was new to Kilkenny and it didn’t really come off. It seemed to me like they were caught in a transition between the old game they were used to and a new game they felt forced into trying.
I believe Kilkenny still have the nucleus of a good team but the squad needs an injection of freshness. They have a good under-21 team this year but only two of those players, Richie Leahy and Liam Blanchfield, were in the match day squad of 26 for the seniors last weekend and as a Kilkenny person that would concern me; contrast that to Waterford and Cork and Limerick who have a handful of under-21s in their starting 15s and a few more on the bench.
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Before this year Kilkenny hadn’t won a Leinster title at under-21 level since 2012 and they haven’t won an All-Ireland at that grade since 2008. I get the impression that Kilkenny took their eye off the ball a little bit with development squads in recent years. Diarmuid O’Sullivan said during the week that Cork development squads would do 40 sessions in a year; my understanding is that in Kilkenny the squads were doing less than half that number of sessions.
I know they’ve rejigged the system this year and some of the coaches who have stepped forward have a good record with Kilkenny teams and colleges teams over the years. The issue was recognised and addressed but it might take a while before the next wave of really good players come through.
In the meantime the Kilkenny management must work with the material they have. The culture that Cody created in Nowlan Park over the last two decades is one of his greatest achievements. It generated the kind of spirit that we saw again in Thurles last Saturday when they came back from the dead to force extra-time. You won’t win anything without that kind of spirit but spirit alone isn’t enough either. Kilkenny will need to move on with different players and they’ll have to think again about their style of play. I expect Cody to embrace both of those challenges.
The championship moves on without Kilkenny and the big games keep coming. Tipperary and Clare will be a massive occasion in Pairc Ui Chaoimh on Saturday. One game away from Croke Park it’s a huge game for both teams. I was hugely disappointed with Clare in the Munster final. They were so obsessed with Anthony Nash’s puck-outs and the sliotars he was using that they lost sight of their own game.
Clare need to throw off the shackles and go for it. They need to push more players up the field and take on the Tipperary defence. They would have seen how many chances Dublin created in the first half last Saturday when they ran at the Tipp backs; Dublin could easily have had two or three goals instead of just one. Lack of pace in defence is a real problem for Tipperary and Clare have the players to exploit that if they go about it the right way. The way they were set up against Cork is not the right way.
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In attack Tipp looked back to themselves against Dublin, not just in their finishing but in the way they were throwing the ball around and playing for each other. That was the Tipp of last year. Over the years it was a trait in Tipp teams that they became individualistic when things weren’t going well and I saw that creeping back into their play over the last couple of months. They’ve probably nipped it in the bud.
Clare will be dangerous on Saturday but Tipp are starting to motor again.