Richie Reid hopes Kilkenny can make amends for past failures
Richie Reid of Kilkenny during the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship semi-final match between Kilkenny and Tipperary at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
The Kilkenny senior hurlers have now gone 10 seasons without winning the Liam MacCarthy Cup, which is the longest stretch in the county’s history.
There were just three players on the Kilkenny senior hurling panel this year with senior All-Ireland medals – the Reid brothers, TJ and Richie, and Eoin Murphy.
How many of them will be back in 2026 to end the county’s 11-year famine for All-Ireland silverware?
Army Private, Richie Reid, was in Croke Park on Tuesday for the Defence Forces jersey launch and wasn’t too forthcoming about what his own future might hold but sounds very confident his brother TJ will be back in the black and amber again for a 19th championship season at the age of 38.
“We'll just see,” said Reid of his own inter-county ambitions for 2026. “I'm with the club now at the minute and I'm just enjoying that very much. We'll take it as it comes.
“TJ is flying it at the minute. He's flying it with the club so look, I don't see any stopping him there at all.
“He's really enjoying the game at the minute. The good thing about it is that he hasn't picked up any serious injuries or knocks or anything like that.
“He's taking his time, he knows how to use his body and how to recover well. When he plays the game, he has the hand and the eye coordination and everything. Yeah, he still has it.”
It would be a surprise if the younger Reid brother doesn’t also hurl on with Kilkenny in 2026 because at the age of 32 he still looks like he’s in his prime.
TJ’s application to his physical conditioning is legendary, but Richie is no slouch in this regard either.
It surely helps being a member of the Defence Forces where physical fitness is a necessity as much as it is on the hurling field, and that he has all the amenities he needs in Stephens Barracks in Kilkenny to keep his body strong and his hurling sharp.
“Yeah, it’s good, it’s very professional the way we train,” says Reid. “Time-wise, it's good, but then obviously it's part of the job as well.
“We have a ball wall in there, last year we did up the gym facility, so that's been newly done. And then we have the wall ball alley which is used the whole time as well.”
The nature of Kilkenny’s All-Ireland SHC semi-final defeat to Tipperary should surely stoke the hunger of every player on the panel for the 2026 campaign.
It was a match they dominated for long stretches but the concession of four goals proved fatal.
Watching Tipperary go on to win the All-Ireland Final must have made that semi-final defeat all the harder to stomach.
Richie Reid, third from left, pictured at the launch in Croke Park of the Defence Forces' new range of team jerseys.
This Kilkenny team has been very competitive in recent years but that’s of little consolation to Reid.
“As players, we're hugely disappointed that we're not getting there,” he says. “The last two years we've failed at the semi-final hurdle. Previously, we got to the All-Ireland (final) and failed as well.
“As players, we're hugely disappointed, we want to be achieving, especially as Kilkenny hurlers. You want to win, any player in the country wants to play there on the biggest day of the year in an All-Ireland final.
“We didn't get there this year, so we failed. It's about knuckling down again. Obviously you're going to be disappointed but there's always a year after coming so it's just about getting your head in the right place and trying to go again.”
Kilkenny manager, Derek Lyng, will hope the decision to add former Kilkenny team-mate, Eddie Brennan, and former Dublin hurler, Niall Corcoran, to his backroom team will help them in their mission to go all the way next year.
Reid is enthusiastic about the impact they might have on the group.
“Yeah, a big addition,” he says. “I got the word last week alright. It's hugely impressive to see him being brought in, himself and Niall Corcoran, so yeah, it's exciting times for the boys, for the players.”
For now, he’s fully focused on Ballyhale’s first round proper clash against Erin’s Own in the Kilkenny SHC this Saturday.
Five-in-a-row champions from 2018 to 2022, they’ve watched O’Loughlin Gaels and then Thomastown occupy the throne they had become so accustomed to, but Reid feels like they’re genuine contenders to reclaim it.
“We've put in good performances,” he says. “We finished third in the group. Other years we've been nearly in the relegation zone. This year we finished third in the league. It's a positive but all that matters now really is the championship phase. It's knockout.
“It's wide open. Any team there nearly can win it at this stage.”
