League success key to Kilkenny's winning formula

ALLIANZ HURLING LEAGUE DIVISION ONE FINAL:Since 2002 Cody has used the league to graft new talent on to already formidable championship squads

WHEN Kilkenny were on the verge of a fourth successive All- Ireland, a survey in this newspaper considered how the team ranked in history. “Every generation has got good teams but this is a stand-out team,” said Pat Daly, the GAA’s Director of Coaching and Games Development.

“Is it the best? We can’t say but all of the evidence from the leagues and championships of recent years points in that direction.”

It was an interesting contribution in that it tagged and referenced Kilkenny’s record in national league competition as part of the evidence.

Tomorrow in Semple Stadium, Kilkenny take on Cork in this year’s Allianz Hurling League final. It is the All-Ireland champions’ eighth league final in 11 years. During that period they have won the title five times and on all but one occasion gone on to add the Liam MacCarthy in September. Kilkenny have also managed to add the All-Ireland even when they have lost the league final, as they did last year.

This is the 10th anniversary of the start of that phenomenal sequence. The final in 2002 was also against Cork and although coverage of the match was distracted by the Gaelic Players Association ‘socks down’ protest – more enthusiastically endorsed by Cork , then within months of the county’s first outbreak of industrial unrest – it marked a watershed for Kilkenny.

The county had been horsed out of the previous year’s All-Ireland semi-final against Galway and change was coming. Manager Brian Cody introduced a number of new faces during the 2002 league campaign and despite assumptions that some of the more established personnel would return, the new faces remained into the championship and its successful conclusion.

Among the four newcomers was Derek Lyng, an athletic, hard working hurler, bypassed at underage level and initially unsure about his position but who finally found his metier at centrefield where he would win six All-Ireland medals.

“When I joined the panel,” he recalls, “we were told that the league was a great opportunity. I remember back then a lot would have been about the team being different for the championship but that’s not how it turned out. Brian has adopted that approach over the past 10 years and players who prove themselves during the league are generally kept on for the championship.

“I think winning that league was very important and it gave us the confidence to drive on. If you start a game for Kilkenny in a league final and you win it, that alone is a great thing to have but for me it gave me huge confidence going into the championship – I played for a team that had actually won something.

“Even last year’s league really helped Kilkenny,” says Lyng. “I know they lost the final to Dublin but at the same time it gave the likes of Colin Fennelly and Paul Murphy the chance to see what it was all about up in Croke Park and see the kind of intensity that’s needed at that level.”

Fennelly and Murphy were selected for their first All-Ireland final starts in last September’s victory over Tipperary and the latter ended the year an All Star.

From 2002, two fundamentals would emerge concerning the composition of Kilkenny teams. Firstly, form on the training ground would count for more than reputation and secondly, places wouldn’t be kept warm for senior players who were either injured or resting; if you played well enough in the spring you stayed as long as form was maintained.

There are obvious exceptions and the importance of Henry Shefflin was clear in the gamble on his knee taken before the 2010 All-Ireland final but as rehabilitation has limited his spring campaigning in recent years, there have been opportunities for others at least to state a case.

There have been many for whom the opportunity didn’t create a platform from which to seize a first-team place even on a limited basis.

The primacy of the panel has also been a feature of Cody’s management. In the controversy over Charlie Carter’s withdrawal from the panel in June 2003 in frustration at not making the first team, the manager stayed silent.

Later in the year after the All-Ireland had been retained he commented generally that inclusion in the county panel was a privilege and beyond that there could be no guarantees.

In his address to the National Coaching Conference in 2007, Cody outlined the collectivist manifesto and a vital task of his management. “Fostering a respect within the panel for everyone’s role,” he explained, “and the duty of everyone on the panel to the rest of the panel. There’ll always be special players, those with extra talent and extra class but if those players aren’t giving the same work rate they’re not special anymore.

“There has to be a sense that everyone can make this team. The training ground has to be a place of opportunity. Everyone has to fight for their place; no one owns the jersey.”

These principles took shape in the formative years of 2002 and ’03, when Kilkenny won back-to-back doubles of league and championship. Perceived as a response to the Galway defeat in 2001, which in part it was, the policy had more far-reaching but practical ambitions, according to Noel Skehan, nine-time All-Ireland medallist and one of Cody’s selectors from 2000-’04.

“The thing about that back-to-back was that we wanted to build a stronger panel and to do that you had to try more players against good opposition,” says Skehan. “It’s no longer a 15-man team; you have to have five or six good subs able to come in. No longer are we looking at 20 or 22 players; we’re looking at 30 or 32.

“Basically the idea was to try and get two players for each position, to make real competition for a place – which has worked out really well for Kilkenny. You’re bound to get injuries. This weekend Kilkenny are missing Henry Shefflin, Richie Power, Michael Rice but there are younger players getting an insight into intercounty matches.”

Critically these introductions to the top level have nearly always been within the context of a successful campaign so there has been the confidence building of adapting to elite levels of hurling while playing with some of the best hurlers in the game and, importantly, while winning.

In the 11 seasons from 2002 – and allowing that this year’s has a match to go – Kilkenny have lost on average fewer than two matches per campaign (1.36) or in total 15 out of 82.

Since the introduction of the calendar year in both the football and hurling leagues, the correlation between success in the spring and later in the summer has been marked but, even so, Kilkenny’s strike rate has been off the charts.

Up until 2002 the league and championship double had been achieved 17 times, an incidence of once every four and a half years, but that’s a global figure. In the eight years that followed Kilkenny won four doubles – that’s more than twice the rate and by the one county.

“Championship is often more about the build-up than anything else,” says Lyng. “That final in 2002: the second half was played at a ferocious pace. We were leading well enough at half-time but Cork came back at us in the second half before we held out to win by a point.

“In my experience league finals have always been played at a very high level and near enough to championship; obviously as the championship goes on the pace picks up and teams are probably a bit fitter and sharper.

“As time goes on, you begin to pick up injuries and there’s part of the league where you might miss out on games but once the clocks go back and you start to do more hurling, everybody’s anxious then to get back particularly if some younger guy has had your spot while you were out.”

Back in Thurles 10 years on from 2002, Kilkenny will bring another league campaign to its conclusion. The dynamic hasn’t changed – aim to win and by doing so in the team context, prove yourself to the manager.

“In the time he’s been there,” says Skehan of Cody, “13 or 14 years, it was always the panel he was focused on and creating competition for places – and he’s still at that.”