Now just 'two games away from hurling immortality'

BRIAN CODY faces a media as short of hard questions as the Galway challenge his team have just dismantled.

“Thanks, lads,” he says, making as if to leave given the absence of clamouring inquiry. Had he been surprised by the apparent ease of victory?

“It wasn’t that apparent to me to be honest,” he says making clear that there are to be no easy admissions in what passes for the post-match euphoria.

“A goal, a 21-yard free, a penalty, another goal and suddenly you get another goal and Galway had a five-minute spell against Offaly the other day when they score two goals and a couple of points.

“They have the ability to do that so it’s not comfortable, but in the end it was comfortable when the final whistle blew, but all along they were capable, the danger was there of pulling it back, but it was a great win for us.”

Kilkenny performed just as they needed to and curbed the threat from Galway and in particular their scoring prodigy Joe Canning. But according to Cody there was no special tactics, no adapting the timeless rigour of their own structure and strengths to cater for an opponent, no matter how apparently formidable. “There were no plans because first of all we had no idea where Joe was playing. We didn’t know the team. As it turned out he started centre forward so we didn’t have a man-marking job on any particular forward at all.

“We picked our team and I think we let the team be known beforehand and we played exactly the team we picked. It wasn’t a question of horses for courses. It was a question of we going out and playing as well as we possibly can ourselves.”

Rummaging around for some item of concern, the question of inaccuracies arose. Seventeen wides for the second day running.

Concerned, Brian?

“We are on a good run of wides all right. TJ what’s the story there?” he mock-seriously inquires of team captain TJ Reid, who in response attempts to frame his club mate and record scorer.

“Henry,” he deadpans. “There were a lot of wides,” resumed Cody, “but I would look on the positive side of that in that there were a lot of chances created. Some of the wides were ones that you would hope would not be happening too often. I don’t worry about things like that. I would certainly worry if we were not creating chances.”

After a long interlude, presumably debriefing his dispirited troops, Galway manager John McIntyre appears. It’s been a long, long two months since his team swept to the NHL title against Cork, whipping up dauntless certainties about the reality of the challenge they would pose Kilkenny in Leinster.

“No excuses. We were beaten by a better team today which reduces the scope for post-mortems and inquests. In general, we were a little bit flat, maybe the two Offaly games took more out of us than we thought.

“Our use of possession wasn’t as clinical as we would have liked. Kilkenny weren’t at their clinical best either but their ability to win primary possession in our attacking half of the field really hurt us.

“We fought honourably to the end. We have to heed the lessons from today. We still have a lot to play for. We can’t rip up the template that has taken us so far this season. Prior to today we had played 13 competitive matches and only fallen once to Tipperary.

“We feel we didn’t do ourselves justice but how much of that was down to Kilkenny, it’s hard to say. They’re two games away from hurling immortality and it’s easy to see why. We’re not in a good place this evening but the game isn’t up for us.

“We have to stand back and admire Kilkenny but we have to keep trying to lower their colours.”