Eoin Cody of Kilkenny celebrates after scoring his side's first goal during the Leinster GAA Hurling Senior Championship final match between Dublin and Kilkenny at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
By John Harrington
Last Saturday Kilkenny became only the fourth ever team to win five Leinster SHC titles in succession.
It’s a great achievement but is perhaps understandably overshadowed somewhat by Limerick’s dominance of the Liam MacCarthy Cup in recent times.
Star forward Eoin Cody believes the Cats deserve more credit though for their own consistency, and after their latest provincial success is looking forward to showing their worth again in the All-Ireland series.
“The last number of years, it’s been a Leinster and a Munster team in an All-Ireland final. Leinster have always come out. That’s always the narrative (Leinster is weaker) but five-in-a-row in Leinster it’s only happened three or four times,” said Cody.
“As I said last year, I don’t think we get enough credit for the consistency in this group of players. Obviously, we’re not a Munster team and we can’t do anything about that but we’ll always be there or thereabouts.
“We’ve come up against a great Limerick team the last couple of years but we’ll always back ourselves and we don’t know need anybody from the outside telling us what we’re good and what we’re not good at.”
Kilkenny certainly looked like a good team when cutting Dublin to ribbons in last Saturday’s one-sided Leinster SHC Final.
Kilkenny players celebrate with the Bob O'Keeffe cup after their side's victory in the Leinster GAA Hurling Senior Championship final match between Dublin and Kilkenny at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile.
It was a tactical master-class on how to disrupt a team that likes to work the ball through the lines from deep positions as Kilkenny forced turnover after turnover and then punished Dublin heavily.
“There was a lot of hard work and we prepared well for it,” says Cody. “You saw what Dublin did to us a few weeks ago. They had their system and we probably weren’t prepared for it then and playing against it ourselves we weren’t happy with how it went.
“We put a lot of work into what they did and what they did well and I think we got on top of it. It shows how we have improved over the last few years, that we were able to get on top of them so early, disrupt their play and then took over the game.
"We knew they were going to do, we knew what we wanted to do and we counterattacked that especially in the forwards. It comes from their puck-outs, that’s their game, it really evolves from their puck-outs and they start their running game.
“It was up to us forwards to stop them doing that and we were very proud what we did as six forwards in the first half especially.”
Cody’s brilliant early goal gave Kilkenny the perfect start to the match, but he doesn’t feel yet he’s at full throttle after a campaign disrupted by an ankle injury.
“It’s been difficult,” he says. “I had injuries but hadn’t missed a championship game before. I had missed training and it was something I’d never been used to. It was mental more than physical different.
“I am probably not too happy with where I am yet. Three weeks of full, hard training before the next game, I’ll be able to push myself and hopefully get to the levels I need to be for the team.
“I just know what I’m capable of and contributing to the team. I have my own standards but I’ll get there yet. Every game has a life of its own. I won’t get too much bogged with it either.”
