A flicker of a smile crossed Brian Cody's face as he was asked about the difference between the Galway team he had watched boss this Leinster Championship round-robin match and the various incarnations of maroon teams he has faced over the last two decades.
"I would say the Galway team of years gone by was also very, very good," he said. "They have won their All-Ireland now, and they threatened to do that many, many times. And they have done it now.
“And you can see the confidence in their play, and the team work in their play. It is not a surprise. The hurlers have been there the whole time. And they are obviously a hugely strong team, and they have an awful lot going for them.”
The praise, delivered with Cody's usual aversion to melodrama, contained multitudes. It was an admission that within Kilkenny they always knew that Galway were capable of reinventing themselves into a county to be feared over many summers. They just didn't know when.
Because they did not meet Galway last summer or over the course of their surprising league win, this was Kilkenny's first close-up taste of what Galway are now. The maroon team paid the best tribute possible to Kilkenny by being as mean defensively as they themselves were back when the Rose of Mooncoin was the only CD needed in Croke Park. Here Kilkenny found it tough to grab a handy point all afternoon.
A lot of frees
“We were obviously getting a lot of frees for sure,” Cody said. “And I suppose a lot of the frees camouflage the fact that you can’t score from play, whereas the opportunity was there if we hadn’t been fouled, and that’s what the free-taker is for. But that is the way it went.
“Sometimes games go like that, and we certainly would like to be working the score board more from play. They did work very hard, but they were under a lot of pressure, there is no doubt about that. Galway are very, very strong, and we know that. We knew we were coming over today to face the All-Ireland champions, an outstanding team.
“And we weren’t good enough today: we weren’t good enough, obviously, on the scoreboard, to take them on. But look it, it’s a round-robin. It is a league thing. We have three games played and have one to play and that’s our focus.”
Bossed every sector
Michael Donoghue has carried his policy of saying absolutely nothing very amicably into the All-Ireland Championship defence. He agreed that his team might have had a bigger lead than four points at half time given how much they had bossed every sector of the field.
“But that’s testament to Kilkenny. We’re under no illusions of what they have done this year. It is always a huge challenge every time we play them. They worked really hard and they restricted us, and our play probably didn’t reflect it on the scoreboard, and that’s just testament to Kilkenny and how hard they worked.”
But after the minor setback of a league defeat to Limerick, this was the first serious statement of intent by Galway since last September. All contenders have been warned.
“We’re happy out. In fairness the last couple of weeks has gone well for us in training. We just really needed to get back into the match situation, and we’re just conscious that there are four games in this. We did put a lot in the fact that this was our first Championship game in Galway.
Massive rapport
“The lads have built a massive rapport with the supporters, and you can see by the size of the crowd what it meant to the people of Galway having the game here.
“The lads responded to that, but as I said, we know it is just game two and we are going into a big challenge next week.”
Donohue grinned at the mention of the five yellow cards and the observation that there was skin and hair flying. The prompt yielded little.
“There always is, and...... c’est la vie.”
