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When Setanta was confronted with the hound of Cullen his reaction was instinctive, hurl the sliotar down the back of the throat of the hound, preserving his own safety by meeting the challenge head on and delivering a shot of unerring accuracy under the most severe pressure. In slaying the hound he took on the title himself as the hound of Cullen and so the legend goes from hundreds of years ago.
Hurling has always been an instinctive sport, not spoiled by tactics, not smothered by professionalism, just instinctive, off the cuff, skills honed through endless hours of practice with a ball unleashed under intense pressure in the cauldron of a ferocious battle carried out on a GAA pitch with honour and valour for the pride of the parish…
Or at least, it always has been that way until recently.
I have seen what professionalism has done to soccer in the last 40 years. The kids are brought into academies at a younger and younger age, the flair coached out of them. The street players like Best, Brady, Pelé, Romario, Ronaldinho, Maradona, Messi they are becoming extinct, instead there’s a conveyor belt of athletes with a great touch churned out of every club academy in the world, all being coached the same possession based, low risk, anti-flair and anti-personality type football that every coach and manager can take and apply their system and tactics to in the hope of bringing some fleeting success to the latest team they represent, but more often just provides an elite lifestyle to those who reach the top of the game often diminishing the hunger and pride in the badge.
For that reason I really hoped professionalism would not creep into hurling, I didn’t want to see the flair coached out of the kids, I wanted to see players express themselves instinctively and produce moments of magic that cannot be coached.
Would John Fenton whip on that ball in today’s game?
Or would he be told to find a man in a red shirt?
Would he have the space to unleash a full swing?
Would his hurley be long enough to connect with the ball on the ground?
I know officially hurling is not professional, however it’s been on a journey.
When Ger Loughnane brought fitness to professional levels to give Clare an advantage over other teams to claim two All-Irelands, well the other teams had a choice, catch up or get left behind.
When Cork brought a running game to claim back to back All-Irelands in 2004-05, Brian Cody had his Kilkenny team bring levels of intensity never before seen in Croke Park to the 2006 All-Ireland Final to stop that 3-in-a-row pursuit of the Rebels.
The bar had been raised again.
Kilkenny set that bar very high – too high for others to reach and sustain, for the next decade, winning 8 out of 10 All-Irelands, however we haven’t won one since! Why?
That’s the burning question around the realm of the black and amber, one that needs to be faced up to in order to take the first steps towards getting back to the top of the hurling world again.
The answer, as you can appreciate, is not a simple one, there are a number of contributing factors.
The ingredients were exceptional in that golden age. Ned Quinn, as Chairman, was bringing the right structure, leadership, delegation and positive environment for success. Brian Cody and his backroom teams were building on that environment and creating an unbreakable spirit that was driving the team and the individual to new unprecedented heights. The calibre of player was unbelievable and plenty JJ Delaney, Henry Shefflin, Jackie Tyrell, Tommy Walsh, Michael Fennelly, Eddie Brennan, Richie Power, Eoin Larkin, Noel Hickey, Michael Kavanagh, later TJ Reid and Richie Hogan.
In 2008 Kilkenny won the Minor, U21, Intermediate and Senior All-Irelands – we were the all-conquering undeniable dominant force.
Do we have that calibre of player now?
Do we have the leadership at County Board Level?
Can we find a manager to bring back the glory days?
It’s obviously going to be very difficult, nigh on impossible, to replicate the calibre of personnel we had in those heady days, however we can’t hide behind that and lament the lack of ingredients. We need to start at the top, at county board level, we need to perform an honest self-assessment at that level and determine what it is we need to improve and how, so that we can start to rebuild and reshape the future of Kilkenny hurling.
If the calibre of player has diminished why is that?
Were we not the first county to introduce development squads? Have they served us well? Were they successful for a while and then become stale? Are other counties doing something different, something more successful? Are we coaching the flair out of our emerging talents? Are we confusing them and burdening them with nutrition, weight programs, tactics, what to do, what not to do?
Of course, like other counties, emigration and wanderlust does rob us of some elite players, just this year Huw Lawlor, defensive lynchpin, absent, Billy Ryan, having plied his trade and just coming into his peak, absconded, plenty of other potential players like Liam Hennessy of Glenmore, hurled up a storm at club level and had gotten a callup but sunnier climes were too appealing.
Why are these guys not saying it’s such a privilege to wear the black and amber there’s nowhere I’d rather be? I’m sure Eoin Larkin, JJ, Henry, Tommy, any of them could have spent a summer elsewhere, but I’m also sure it wouldn’t even bear thinking about for men like these. If they were playing in a team that wasn’t so successful would they have been more inclined to travel? If the environment Brian Cody created wasn’t so compelling would they have had their heads turned more easily? Which begs the question why are today’s top players not grasping the opportunity to wear the black and amber jersey anymore? Is it the lack of success? Is wearing the jersey not enough? Do lads think they must reap some rewards for the huge commitment they have to put in? Is it the environment? Is there something lacking within the camp that is turning lads off rather than turning them on? Is it bigger than the Kilkenny setup? Is it a question the GAA need to tackle?
As regards management, yes the Brian Cody era is over and yes he is an extremely hard act to follow and Derek Lyng gave it his best shot, he delivered Leinster titles and came so close to beating the eventual All-Ireland winners in the 2024 and 2025 semi-finals, but we’ve exited the championship with a whimper this year in May and are now looking for a management team to rekindle the Kilkenny spirit that Brian Cody galvanised.
There is no point denying that we are on a downward trajectory, get this appointment wrong and the freefall continues, get it right and we start trending in the right direction once more. The appointment needs to happen before the club championship and needs to bring in someone who recognises what epitomises Kilkenny hurling but also recognises the modern game of hurling.
I mention the modern game of hurling and this, for me, is the most significant cause for Kilkenny’s demise. I have watched Kilkenny take to the pitch against teams like Cork and Dublin this year but have worryingly observed us play two completely different sports on that pitch.
I referenced earlier the journey that hurling has been on up to the point where we last won an All-Ireland, however since then the journey has been taken over by NASA. The journey commenced with an ass and cart back in 1884, various makes and models of cars probably brought the journey into the 21st century, where it was taken over by sophisticated and dependable train service, before Brian Cody introduced the intensity of the TGV, but now there seems to be a military precision with huge backroom teams and stats driven focus on outcomes that has driven the journey into the stratosphere and beyond. Where will it end? Does anyone know? Is it a danger to the enjoyment of the game for the players themselves?
I have already touched on the journey I’ve seen soccer take over the last forty or fifty years, it’s a completely different sport now to the game that Jack Charlton had Ireland play to qualify for Euro ’88 and Italia ’90. Back then you could get out of any trouble at the back by getting the ball back to your goalkeeper who could pick it up, then everyone squeezed into the middle third for the launch of the long ball, a flick on maybe a half chance, maybe offside, maybe a knock back to the other goalkeeper, repeat.
It wasn’t much of a spectacle, the ball was in play probably less than half an hour and probably in the air half of that time!
Almost every team played 4-4-2 and players rigidly stayed in their positions.
Contrast to today’s fluent game which is almost 5-a-side on a bigger pitch with more players, where positions become more fluid and a rigid formation doesn’t exist, instead there’s a crowd drawn around the ball with possession of utmost importance, unless maybe you’re Mikel Arteta!
Now the ball is rarely not in play and the longest delays are VAR related!
The game of hurling is heading in the same direction, if not already there.
The rigid, religious shape has been replaced with modern systems designed to create overloads around the ball and space in opposition halves.
The diving from soccer creeping into our honourable game, two yellow cards for pretty mundane offences will see a player red carded for nothing, penalty shoot-outs in hurling!
We don’t have VAR but we do have Hawkeye!
The parallels are plentiful.
Soccer, of course, is professional and has long been professional, however soccer was a working man’s game where the players on the pitch represented the hard working fan who could attend a game at 3pm every Saturday to watch his local team.
The likes of Paddy Crerand and John Giles would embody the working class man on the pitch and fight hard for their cause, giving them something to be proud of, while these men only earned £20 per week and rubbed shoulders with the fans they represented. They were one of their own and never forgot their roots.
There were hardcore fans who wouldn’t miss a game.
All of that’s changed, games now could be any day of the week at any time of the day in any country in the world. Following your team to watch every match is now impossible. Ticket prices and merchandise can be extortionate, while the players are now so elitest the working class man can no longer relate to fella’s that move in different (exclusive) circles and earn more than the cost of a working man’s house every week for sitting on the bench.
Soccer has sold it’s soul, the parallels between the journey soccer has been on and the journey hurling is on are striking, please do not allow us to arrive at the point were hurling has sold its soul.
Maybe for the older folk I hear at every match that groan and sigh at sideways passes in the full-back line that roar “leave the ball up the field” it has already sold its soul!
I would really hate to see the game become professional, however, it seems the only facet of the game that is not professional at this stage is the fact that players don’t get paid and I get the feeling that this is becoming more and more of a problem for the players who look at their counterparts in other sports and wonder why they still have to go to work.
So why is this more detrimental to Kilkenny and more advantageous to other counties?
Well Kilkenny are the most successful team in the history of hurling, pure unadulterated hurling, we are the best exponents of the traditional game, however the game has changed.
Kilkenny are traditionalists, we are finding it very difficult to adapt or even want to adapt.
Other counties have the resources and the desire to keep pushing this journey into the stratosphere, for Kilkenny the TGV has left and not returned and we’re back on the team bus wondering if we should revert to the horse and cart or try to take the engine out of the bus and see would it work in a space shuttle!
Other counties have the invaluable and immeasurable advantage of having people working with teams and youngsters on development squads that have considerable exposure to other sports like soccer, Gaelic football, basketball, rugby and even American Football where tactics, systems and shape are all part of the vernacular and off the cuff, instinctive stuff is curtailed, so the transition has been so much easier and rapid, but in Kilkenny the monoculture of hurling, hurling, hurling that served us so well for so long is now a disadvantage for our teams trying to compete in this sport that is still called hurling, but is a completely different sport to the one we mastered.
It looks like we are victims of our own success. That glorious decade from 2006 to 2015 where we won 8 of 10 senior All-Irelands has gotten the other counties to consciously or subconsciously say well we can’t beat them at that game so let’s redefine the parameters and play a game that we can be successful at.
Eleven years and counting now since Liam McCarthy was last paraded Noreside, have we been remorselessly reclassified as relics of a historic and traditional game, left behind by the undoubted evolution of the game or can we either show that some tweaks to a traditional game can still bring about All-Ireland success (somewhat realistic) or that we can adapt our game to surpass the counties that have a 10 year (or more) head start on us in this modern sport (much less likely)?
So many unanswered questions, who in Kilkenny GAA is brave enough to tackle them one by one and lead us back to the top table?
Or are we destined to watch Cork end their 21 year drought with a period of dominance that will knock us off the top of the honours list?
Please heed the warnings and don’t let that happen…
When Setanta slayed the hound he transitioned to become Cú Chulainn. He went from mere mortal to legend, demigod and hero immortalised in folklore.
Chill Chainnigh have transitioned from the most successful hurling team, feared, respected, revered, legends of the game, yet modest and humble, to now being just mere mortals, just another team in the way of the top dogs on their relentless pursuit of top honours.
Comment if you have any ideas as to how the Cats can yet again become Super Cats…
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