THE story has been told before but we’ll tell it again, just for effect. One night over last Christmas, a Limerick hurler was in Langton’s nightclub in Kilkenny City when he ran in to a Kilkenny hurler.
Drink had loosened tongues and dropped inhibitions but when the talk inevitably turned to hurling, the Kilkenny player got animated. “Did you see the DVD,” he asked. “You’d think they had just invented hurling.”
The DVD he was referring to was ‘Behind the Banner – the Inside Story of the 2013 All-Ireland hurling champions’. Clare were fantastic All-Ireland champions last year, especially when emerging with such a young team.
Their breakthrough was also a severance from an era of absolute Kilkenny dominance, having won six of the previous seven All-Irelands, which added to the public lure and excitement around Clare’s success.
Yet all the while, Kilkenny were privately seething at all the talk about a new revolution, a new playing style, and a new team arriving like the cavalry with projections of total dominance. Especially when Kilkenny had won nine of the previous 13 All-Irelands.
Publicly, Kilkenny would never drop their guard and express that anger. They privately store up grievances to provide the venom in their bite and the fuel in their legs to drive the machine forward. Yet Kilkenny trainer Michael Dempsey recently hinted at Kilkenny’s attitude towards suggestions of a New World Order.
“I’m not so sure the style of hurling has changed hugely,” said Dempsey. “Maybe Clare do play more of a running game but the fundamentals are still about winning ball and using it very well. I can remember going back to Kilkenny in previous All-Irelands and people speaking about how the team played.
Maybe if you compared us from those games, I don’t think there might be as big a difference as people are portraying. When you play well, everyone talks about your style. When you play badly, people talk about your lack of style.”
Clare will know all about that reality after last Sunday. The fundamentals of winning the ball and using it well still dictate everything but there has clearly been a slight alteration to Kilkenny’s style this season.
Dempsey does make a valid point in referring to Kilkenny’s style in previous All-Irelands because Kilkenny played a very precise passing game at stages of the 2011 All-Ireland final to negate Tipperary protecting the D, as they had done so effectively in the 2010 final.
Yet Kilkenny’s possession management was poor for long periods of last year’s championship, particularly against Cork when they were reduced to 14 men and they abjectly failed to deal with Cork’s sweeper by just lorrying long ball down the field.
They are far more precise in their passing now but their running and support play has also been far sharper. And that has been really reflected in their goalscoring.
In the league, they were the highest goalscoring team in Division 1A with 21 green flags raised in eight games. Although Offaly were hopeless, Kilkenny scored five goals and it could have been 10.
Compare those stats to last summer when Kilkenny managed just two goals six games. And one of those was a penalty, while the other came after a long ball from the Kilkenny goalkeeper, which caught the Dublin defence off guard in the drawn Leinster semi-final. In other words, Kilkenny weren’t cutting teams apart, which was always a signature mark of their play.
After averaging 2.3 goals per game between 1999-2012, and 2.5 goals in 2012, Kilkenny’s X-factor of goals was seriously diluted last season.
Despite Offaly’s ineptitude, the most notable aspect of Kilkenny’s attacking play and lust for goals two weeks ago was their support play and movement. With a combined 86 plays, Michael and Colin Fennelly, TJ Reid, Walter Walsh and Eoin Larkin also gave the last pass or were centrally involved in 19 scores.
The big question now though is, are Kilkenny really back? They secured another league title but then they were also league champions last year. They are still favourites for the All-Ireland however Sunday’s test against a hungry and quietly confident Galway outfit will tell a great deal.
In hurling, there can only really be talk of a New World Order if Kilkenny are no longer the game’s dominant force. Sunday will really underline whether the revolution and New Order is here or whether the Old Order is still ruling, or trying to rule, like an oligarch.
