ON A day like this, when by tea time our ignorance will be taunted by all the things we didn’t believe or should have known, there is a special premium on the things we can say for sure. In the Brian Cody years Kilkenny have been a daily source of verifiable certainties but on the big days those certainties always seem magnified.
This summer has been like no other under Cody’s watch. His long-held desire for a fluid team bound by a stable value system finally materialised. In the course of five championship matches, 27 Kilkenny have players have seen action, a staggering turnover by any standard. Yet, every altered version of the starting team was identifiably them in all the ways they have taught us to recognise.
In sport every successful group has a conscience; building that over many years has been Cody’s greatest achievement. The faces changed but the values remained. Every Kilkenny player understands that the best way to protect his place on the team is not to think of himself. Over 15 years Cody has convinced some of the greatest individuals who ever played the game that they served themselves best by serving the group first.
So half of the forwards that swarmed all over Dublin’s backs in the Leinster final were left out for the All-Ireland semi-final and nothing fundamental changed. Colin Fennelly made a brilliant turnover on his own 45 in the first half against Limerick and when he got up off the ground the two closest Kilkenny players were Padraig Walsh wearing 10 and Eoin Larkin wearing 15, both miles from their grid-given positions, both available.
You could suggest that they were tactically obliged to be in their half-back line but it’s deeper than that: every Kilkenny player is hard-wired to think that another Kilkenny player somewhere needs a dig-out. Kilkenny were clocked at 40 hooks, blocks and tackles against Limerick in the semi-final which was their biggest tally since the 2006 All-Ireland final, when another Kilkenny team in transition won the All-Ireland. Only three of the 2006 team played any part in the semi-final three weeks ago but the conscience that fired both performances was the same.
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This is what Tipperary must face. How will Tipperary break them down? At central points. They must look at Brian Hogan and JJ Delaney and see possibilities. Declan Hannon scored five points from play and had his best game in a Limerick jersey by a distance in the semi-final; Hogan couldn’t lay a glove on him and his closest aides couldn’t pick up the slack. Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher is a much different kind of player but more direct and more dynamic and he will surely go for Hogan’s throat. If they can turn Hogan into an access point they’re in business.
Delaney is a different challenge. His cuteness, his hurling brain, his wherewithal in hand-to-hand combat make him the most formidable Kilkenny defender of the Cody era. But even Delaney is not the player he once was. The key for Tipperary is to feed Seamus Callanan with deliveries that will make Delaney move. Anything that lands on their heads is a dead ball. When Tipperary beat Kilkenny in the 2010 All-Ireland they broke Noel Hickey; to win today they must break the Kilkenny full back again.
So much will hinge on the battle between the Tipperary half backs and the Kilkenny half forwards, the strongest line on both teams. Call it? TJ Reid is back at number 12, his favourite position, after being made to suffer in the full forward line for much of the semi-final; Michael Fennelly is a towering puck-out target at number 10 and the history of Padraic Maher struggling against bigger men goes right back to Aisake O hAilpin in 2010.
Brendan Maher is the spiritual leader of this Tipperary team and his record in three All-Ireland finals against Kilkenny is unimpeachable. But Colin Fennelly is playing better now than at any time since his debut season, marrying the incredible work rate he brought to the 2011 All-Ireland final with a terrific output of 2-16 from play in five championship matches. He runs with such directness and scavenges so widely for possession that he is a nightmare for a number six.
Our belief is that Kilkenny will win the battle of the half lines and drive on from there. James Barry has done admirably well as a stand-in full back in his breakthrough season but Richie Power will represent the greatest test of Barry’s nascent career. Power was the game-breaker in the semi-final and on any given day he has that capacity: he’s a finisher and a creator and he can take the ball any way it comes. Fennelly is the biggest man in the Kilkenny forward line but Power is the best fielder of a dropping ball.
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Tipperary could easily produce their best Croke Park performance since 2010 and still not win. Kilkenny? What we already know is impossible to ignore.