TOM HUMPHRIEStalks to Anthony Daly and Joe Dooley, who can't find a fissure or a weakness in the awesome juggernaut that is Kilkenny

DREAMING THE impossible dream?

For all those counties who have fired their slingshots at the stripey men this season the knowledge must be daunting. Kilkenny are closing in on five in a row with no sign the pressure is getting to them or that the pressure is even discernible anymore.

They take every injury setback in their stride, they play every game within their comfort zone. They don’t discuss their business or hide their business, they just go about their business. Kilkenny have no problems; they are everybody else’s problem. And the best chance to beat them may have been last year.

This summer when Kilkenny met Galway and Dublin in rematches from decent games last year they swatted them aside disdainfully. They are imperious.

Anthony Daly has butted his managerial head against the great wall of Kilkenny a few times in the course of their pomp. He doesn’t see a fissure or a weakness anywhere. “In fact, I just think with them that they probably have pushed on with the midfield this year. It has added a new dimension in the way they are playing. Michael Rice is probably out this Sunday but by all accounts Cha is playing very well although he is a different type of player to Rice.

“I think they look more comfortable than they did last year. Hickey is back and JJ is out in his best spot again. They look more at ease. The strength in depth thing they have is frightening.”

He pauses to perform a census.

John Tennyson out. Richie Hogan out. Rice out. Kilkenny will fill those three jerseys and still more than likely have Aidan Fogarty and Derek Lyng left over. The two Urlingford men have what? Eleven All-Ireland medals between them?

This year Kilkenny didn’t stress themselves for the National League. Another wise decision. They seem more relaxed now than they have in quite a while. There are no question marks hovering over their heads.

“If there are weaknesses they are hard to see,” says Joe Dooley, Offaly’s manager and one who has spent a hurling lifetime gazing over the border and wondering what is different. “Possibly there is a weakness in that they are so long on the road that things might not happen on any given day but given their form this year it’s hard to see that.

“Last year they seemed to be under more pressure, they were finding it harder to get going. They seem fresher this year. Fewer lads injured. To win the All-Ireland they will have to beat Cork then Tipp or Waterford. There’s still work to be done.”

The rest of the hurling world is running out of options. Everybody has tried at some stage to go mano a mano and scrap out a win. Kilkenny pay as much heed as a cliff pays to the sea beating away beneath it.

“I don’t think there is a team out there at the minute to stand up to them physically,” says Daly. “My own experiences against them and looking at them it’s hard to see why you would try. My first year with Clare back in 2006 we played them in the semi- final. We gave them a great match and lost by eight. Two in it with six minutes to go. We made two awful mistakes and let them in for two goals (Henry Shefflin and Eoin McCormack). The thing was that we had big, strong in-your-face men all over the field.

“Gerry Quinn, the Lohans, Seánie McMahon, Colin Lynch in midfield; Carmody, Griffin and Gilligan, three massive men in the forwards. Physically we were able to stand up to it but they have taken it to another dimension since. They are way stronger now.”

Dooley can’t see it either. Intense physicality just earns you the admission over the sideline to play now. Nothing else. “I’d say physically isn’t the way to beat them. You have to match them but you won’t bully them. Cork have a lot of experience and in two games against Waterford they were very flat. They’ll be hoping to rise it. They will need to lead from the start. If Kilkenny get a lead-up they will find it very hard to get them back.

“Cork won’t beat them physically and they have the problem with the running game. Do the fellas who used to do the running at them have the legs for it anymore? I doubt it. Cork’s best bet is route one. Hit it in on top of Aisake and Pat Horgan and hope for the best and take their chances from out the field when they crop up. They have to go man to man with them. Just win the battles. It’s not easy but every team reaches a day when it just doesn’t happen. Cork are strong in defence and midfield. If Cork got a lead-up Kilkenny might have reached that day when it doesn’t happen.”

You have to wonder still if there is no window of tactical opportunity, no rumour of a weakness. Neither man sees it if there is. “Listen, says Daly, “on the day of the All-Ireland in 2006 Cody basically said to Cusack, ‘okay, hit it to the corner backs if you want;. He withdrew the two wing forwards out off the two wing backs and put the two wing forwards out to midfield, he put the two midfielders back making a line of five across the half-back line. He doesn’t get criticised! If you win, everything is good!

“Normally if you drop one man back you get shot! But that is the blue print ever since. That’s the way. The corner forwards will come halfway between Shane O’Neill and Gardiner. They’ll drop and try to tease Donal Óg into hitting Gardiner. They’ll put the pressure on from there.”

Dooley, like Daly, believes Kilkenny have improved on last year. “Rice and Fennelly have definitely brought them on in midfield. They are very mobile men. They don’t just play in front of their back line. They are covering a lot of miles in a game. They might lose a little bit without Rice but being able to bring Cha Fitzpatrick in is unbelievable.”

Then there are the forwards.

“Brian Cody names six forwards and they never finish the game in the same positions. Even by half-time they are moved into other positions. They can all hurl any position on the forward line.

“You just can’t say who is going to be where. Cork will try to do a man-marking job but that only lasts so long. A good wing back is suddenly playing corner back and he is out of position and exposed. What do you do? You get him out of there.”

They are basically unmarkable and unmanageable. “It’s been tried,” says Daly, “marking them man for man. If you are marking Henry (Shefflin) and he goes full forward you have to go full back. Shefflin, Reid, Brennan, Gorta (Martin Comerford) can play in any one of the six positions. Even Richie Hogan has no bother playing centre forward or anywhere else. It’s hard to do. Basically any one of them can play anywhere. How do you counter that?”

Daly, a hurling man to his core, pauses again. Something has struck him. He knows Shefflin is a medical rep. He knows Noel Hickey is a farmer. He doesn’t know what any the others do. He recognises some of them from awards ceremonies.

“They just seem the most focused bunch of guys I have ever seen. I don’t know what the Kerry four-in-a-row team were like. They were involved in a few bits and pieces. Nothing in Kilkenny ever cracks. They seem to realise that this is a unique chance to do something great in their lives. They are intent on being the greatest ever team. They have just decided they are going to drive on and keep going. Every one of them.”

Dooley and Daly stand in front of the immense, impregnable monument that is this Kilkenny team. The only certainty is that nothing lasts forever. “I think there is only one solution,” says Dooley.

“They don’t appear to have any weaknesses. You have to match them position by position. Every player has to hurl his position and try to get the better of the man he is on. Tactics against Kilkenny doesn’t really work. You won’t beat them physically. You’d try to put the shackles on two or three key forwards, Henry, Richie Power and maybe Eoin Larkin. Hope that the others would be contained a bit or one or two of them has a bad day.”

As regards tomorrow they both feel that Cork have only one option. Route One. Long, high ball to Aisake Ó hAilpín, “If Aisake will catch a couple over Hickey’s head? Then maybe. If you are to beat Kilkenny you have to outscore them by two goals at least. If they score two you have to score four,” adds Dooley.

Cork need to take a lead early on and nourish themselves with it if they are to have any hope.

“Kilkenny still have to go out and hurl,” says Dooley, “and that takes a big effort mentally every day you go out, no matter who you are.”

And some day they will summon the resources for that big effort and not be able to find them. But for now tomorrow and the next few weeks, it’s best not to depend on that happening. It will be a long time before we see them as hurling’s Ozymandias and the lone and level sands stretch far away.