The week before the hurling league began in February, Dublin manager Ger Cunningham made a comment that everyone else in the hurling world outside Kilkenny desperately wanted to believe. Despite the fact that only one of the five Kilkenny players who retired after last year’s All-Ireland final win started the replay, losing 38 All-Ireland medals from a dressing room was still bound to have an effect.
“It’s got to,” said Cunningham. “You have got to give people a chance now and those names will not be as well known. They still have a lot of very good players, but from that point of view, it’s still probably less intimidating.”
Losing so much experience was always going to generate discussion about Kilkenny’s future, but where does that debate really start and end? After the 2011 All-Ireland final, five players with 33 All-Ireland medals also retired (albeit over a longer period of time). Kilkenny still went on to retain their All-Ireland title.
The loss of JJ Delaney (the only one of the five departed to start the replay) is undoubtedly a psychological boost to other teams because he was such an institution. Kilkenny also moved on last year effectively without Henry Shefflin and Tommy Walsh – two other massive pillars of Cody’s empire – and still won an All-Ireland. The average age of the starting team for the All-Ireland replay was just over 26. “In a kind of sly, unique way,” said Jackie Tyrrell after that game “Brian (Cody) has moulded another team to carry on again.”
It was easy to see what Tyrrell was getting at. The half-back line was Kilkenny’s best line, making more combined plays than any other line, with the three players (Kieran Joyce, Padraig Walsh and Cillian Buckley) amongst Kilkenny’s top five performers. It was Kilkenny’s fifth different half-back line of the summer. Walsh hadn’t started a game there since Offaly in June. Joyce hadn’t started a game all summer, only getting game-time once, against Offaly. And all of a sudden, Cody had formed a formidable looking half-back line for the future, with an average age of just 24.
Last summer, the carousel turned at a faster rate than at any other time under Cody. In the previous 15 seasons, the most players Kilkenny had used in championship was 25. In 2014, that figure went as high as 27.
In their opening league game against Cork last month, the machine just continued to rage on again. Kilkenny picked a team that included just seven starters from last year’s All-Ireland replay, one heavily populated with rookies, and just swatted an experienced Cork team aside. A new look team was still moulded in the same template of honesty and hard work that had served Kilkenny so well under Cody.
Three games on though, has the machine finally begun to stall? Cork were dire in their opening match, so have Kilkenny become less intimidating, as Cunningham suggested? Defeats at the hands of Dublin, Galway, and Tipperary has now plunged Kilkenny into a relegation final.
Questions about Kilkenny’s mortality, or when their total domination is ever going to end, have been asked a thousand times over the last few years, but Kilkenny keep finding the answers. The current fears have also been offset given that Kilkenny still have Richie Power, Michael and Colin Fennelly, TJ Reid, Joey Holden, and possibly Shefflin, still to return. Eoin Larkin has also been injured during this campaign, while Conor Fogarty, excellent last season, picked up a serious ankle injury against Cork. Missing that many big-game players would torpedo most teams’ ambitions but Kilkenny have still been – albeit barely - hanging in.
In a league as competitive as this one, it was accepted in Kilkenny from day one that this spring campaign was going to be a struggle with the amount of bodies they were down. That has really been obvious in attack where 56% of Kilkenny’s scores have come from Richie Hogan, the majority of them from placed balls. Their struggles up front were more obvious than ever last Sunday when they only managed 0-4 in the second half. Aside from Hogan’s 0-10 haul, only two other players scored from play.
What else has the league suggested about Kilkenny? This time last year, Cody was shaking the team up for fun, using 32 players throughout the spring. This campaign has been completely different due to the body count, with Cody deploying 23 players to date, and never using more than three subs in a game.
The spring has also more or less confirmed that Kilkenny will be hoping that Joey Holden can nail down the full-back spot on his return. The jury is still out on whether he can, but Holden is strong, not easily turned and possesses good defensive instincts.
Last Sunday’s defeat to Tipp was Kilkenny’s heaviest loss to their arch rivals in almost 50 years. It wasn’t ideal, but the most accurate gauge of where Kilkenny are at the moment can still probably be found in the second half against Dublin. Down to 13 men and trailing by 14 points, Kilkenny dug in and only lost by five points.
Kilkenny may not look as intimidating as they were, but their hunger and spirit is as strong as ever. For now, they’ll probably take where they’re at before their big names return and the real serious stuff begins.
