Former Kilkenny captain Eddie O'Connor has been highly critical of the handling of the county team in last Sunday's All-Ireland final defeat by Offaly.
O'Connor, who led the team to the 1993 final victory, has been scathing about the absence of John Power from the squad for the match and also believes that Adrian Ronan should at least have been on the substitutes' bench. O'Connor has never shied away from controversy and yesterday spoke of his disappointment that John Power was ignored by the team manager Kevin Fennelly and the selectors, Mick McCormack and Dick O'Neill.
"The construction of the team was wrong. Power was the man for the centre forward position with Andy Comerford at midfield. The selectors got it completely wrong. The whole thing was a shambles.
"In my view Kilkenny had a poor championship. They beat Dublin, Laois and a poor Offaly team in the Leinster final before beating Waterford in the semifinal. Waterford were built up by the media and were not a great team. Kilkenny needed to be much stronger to beat Offaly after they had beaten Clare, but some of the best players in the county were sitting in the stand.
"I could not believe that two subs were brought on so late in the match. What you need in a situation like that is to have one or two players with experience to turn a match around. Wexford used Billy Byrne to good effect in that kind of a situation and the same happened with George O'Connor several times. Kilkenny used Christy Heffernan to good effect in such situations as well.
"Even if they hadn't started John Power, he was the kind of player needed for a bit of inspiration when things were not going well. A lot of people are far from happy with the way things were handled. People should be chosen on proven ability and merit, not on age grounds. It is hard to beat experience when the chips are down," he said. In the meantime the All-Ireland hurling championship series has broken several records, including attendances and gate receipts. The paying attendance at last Sunday's All-Ireland final between Offaly and Kilkenny (65,491) brought the total attendance in this year's championship matches to 587,595, which represented an increase of 103,885 on the previous year.
The figures do reflect the fact that Clare and Waterford met twice and that Offaly and Clare met three times, nevertheless they are impressive and would seem to indicate that the trend will continue in football. There was a huge attendance at Kildare-Kerry semi-final which topped the 62,000 mark and all indications that the final between Kildare and Galway as a complete "sell-out".
