By Kevin Egan

Four titles as a player and now 17 as a manager, Brian Cody’s stamp on the Leinster Hurling championship has been truly remarkable.

When the James Stephens man finally decides to draw a line under his time at the helm of the Kilkenny senior team, yesterday’s win over Dublin is unlikely to stand out as one of the more memorable ones, as there have been plenty of dramatic tight finishes, and plenty of awe-inspiring landslides. This was neither – but to Cody, they’re all incredibly valuable, both in their own right, and as a step closer to the ultimate goal for the year.

“Everybody wants to win their provincial championship”, he asserted.

“We wanted to win the Leinster championship, everybody who competed in it wanted to win it, same with Munster and you will see the desire in both teams to win the Munster final tomorrow. Obviously, it is a great prize to get into an All-Ireland semi-final. Dublin go into an All-Ireland quarter-final now and there’s going to be a big challenge waiting for them, but they’re going to pose a big challenge to whoever comes out of it (qualifiers) as well.

“It’s another win. It was a huge battle. It took us a long, long time to get into a position to get even a small bit comfortable. We were never comfortably, really.

“We got the first few points, TJ got a wonderful point to start it off, but Dublin just came back into the game as they bound to do. They worked their way into the game. The work-rate was strong through all the field and it had to be”.

At a time when scoring rates have increased, aspects like scoring just five points in a little under half an hour in the first half, or the absence of any significant goal threat, were cited to Brian Cody as a possible cause of concern. He disagreed with the assertion.

“We created good goal chances the last day, we didn’t create too many today but that’s hurling, that’s the way it goes and Dublin defensively were very strong even though they were short some very good players.

Cody mentioned the injury to Eoghan O’Donnell and the absence of fellow corner back Cian O’Callaghan as particularly significant, and said that his team and everyone else will have to heed the lessons of what happened to Dublin, who lost four players due to Covid contact.

“Everybody is going to have to be really, really careful. Dublin were disadvantaged, there is no doubt about that. The reality is it’s there for absolutely everybody and we’re just going to have to be absolutely, totally vigilant.

“You can be very unlucky and get the virus but it’s the close contact situation that really can cripple a team. The responsibility is on everybody concerned to be totally vigilant, and you can still have hard luck so hopefully over the next few weeks it will go well for all teams because it was so important to continue on playing sport.

“What’s there is so, so serious. Obviously, we’re getting closer to the end game if you like but now it’s just attacking us again. There is a huge responsibility on everybody to be very, very careful”.