Football

Kicking Out: Trophies not the only mark of greatness

Kilkenny manager Brian Cody has been at the helm since 1998, and guided the county to its 16th Leinster title during that time with a dogged win over Galway on Saturday evening. Picture by Seamus Loughran
Kilkenny manager Brian Cody has been at the helm since 1998, and guided the county to its 16th Leinster title during that time with a dogged win over Galway on Saturday evening. Picture by Seamus Loughran Kilkenny manager Brian Cody has been at the helm since 1998, and guided the county to its 16th Leinster title during that time with a dogged win over Galway on Saturday evening. Picture by Seamus Loughran

AS Richie Hogan scooped and batted the sliotar into the Canal End goal on Saturday evening, the thought struck that this Kilkenny team is the true mark of Brian Cody’s greatness.

In his 23-year reign as Kilkenny manager (1998-present) Cody’s teams have won 11 All-Irelands. They were all achieved between 2000 and 2015.

At his disposal over that period were some of the finest hurlers ever to grace a GAA field.

Henry Shefflin, JJ Delaney, DJ Carey, Tommy Walsh, to name just a few.

Between the four of them, they amassed 36 Allstars.

Now, Cody is blessed by TJ Reid.

A player who considered quitting when he was dropped for the 2012 All-Ireland quarter-final against Limerick, the Ballyhale clubman has been the most consistently brilliant hurler in Ireland over the past few seasons.

There is not the same depth of quality around him as was on the fringes of their all-conquering teams.

And yet from a position of near-hopelessness on Saturday evening, they found a way to another Leinster title by forcing Galway into submission.

It is the second time in year they’ve achieved such a feat.

Last year’s All-Ireland semi-final win over Limerick was one of the most remarkable team performances of Cody’s reign.

They were effectively given next to no hope of beating the reigning champions, who seemed to be on a clear path to back-to-back successes.

Nobody expected Kilkenny to stop them. But from the moment that Reid put them ahead in the first minute, Cody’s team was never caught.

They achieved victory based on the simplest and most important premise - absolute relentlessness.

When a Limerick defender was trying to come out with a ball, he was hounded by three and four black and amber shirts.

Limerick couldn’t get the quality they liked on their clearances and that gave Kilkenny’s defenders a 50-50 chance when the ball was arriving.

Saturday evening’s recovery felt built on a similar footing.

With 15 minutes to go, Galway had just found their stride to move five points clear. They seemed utterly dominant in every facet of the game.

Kilkenny just dug in and played the part of the annoying little brother again, refusing to go away and dodging every swipe at brushing them off.

Richie Hogan’s goal was a piece of magical beauty and the ability to shift TJ Reid closer to goal underlined that there remains a real mark of quality about the current Kilkenny team.

Mostly, though, they continue to pour every ounce of themselves into the jersey every time they put it on.

Cody was praised by the RTÉ panel after the game for the fact that his team had played more “through the lines” than any Kilkenny team in the past.

He has never admitted to subscribing heavily to ‘tactics’, but no manager survives 23 years without adapting.

Whatever it is about him, the current hurlers of Kilkenny seem as capable of reaching levels you don’t always think are achievable as his past teams were of winning what they were expected to.

The last All-Ireland came in 2015 and there was a defiance about them in the following season’s final, even though they were outclassed by Tipperary on the day.

The greatness of Brian Cody is about more than the trophies he’s won.

Perhaps that has been lost in the debate over Mickey Harte, who last weekend stepped down as Tyrone manager following an 18-year spell in charge.

He continued to be judged against the standards that he set in the early part of his managerial career.

Like Cody, he was able to avail of some of the best players of a generation. The Tyrone team of the noughties was laced with genuine class from back to front.

And like Kilkenny, Tyrone have just not had the same quality of player in recent years. Others have been better.

Their final championship performance under him, despite the fact that it ended in defeat to Donegal, is one that he can take some level of satisfaction from.

Managerial greatness is almost wholly dependent on the quality of the players at your disposal.

Had Mickey Harte or Brian Cody started out in inter-county management with the teams they had at their disposal in 2020, there’s little chance they’d ever have had two decades each in charge.

In GAA, we tend to traditionally stick closely to the three-year template that Tyrone county board wanted to go with in appointing whoever was to be in charge from 2021 until 2023.

Increasingly few go beyond that because unless significant progress can be seen by the naked eye, whatever has been done will be drowned out by the calls of ‘sure what has he won?’

Jim Gavin’s greatest success is the same as Cody’s was. Not that he repeatedly won All-Irelands as such, but that his teams consistently applied themselves to the levels they were capable of.

The trophies were a mere consequence. And had he stayed in charge for 18 years, there too would have come a day when Dublin would have stopped winning All-Irelands.

Greatness is often defined by how the mantelpiece glistens beneath the light.

But in continuing after 23 years to motivate a team to conceal their flaws beneath a cover of pure ferocious workrate?

This win over Galway and last year’s over Limerick will, to me, be above any All-Irelands as the enduring mark of Brian Cody’s greatness.