Champions won't wilt under physical assault

LOCKERROOM:If Kilkenny are to be beaten at all this year, teams will have to have a cheeky sense of themselves, writes TOM HUMPHRIES.

SO NOW we know what we already suspected. Or pretty much knew. Kilkenny’s attack on a fourth All-Ireland in a row will be a series of challenges in which they are required to match themselves physically with teams who throw themselves at them with the ferocity of berserkers.

And Kilkenny won’t wilt. They will draw on their own deep knowledge of the darker side of the game and match teams toe to toe and bruise for bruise. They aren’t dilettante champions likely to swoon and wilt under the pressure of unusual physicality.

Tipperary in the league final and Galway on Saturday night in Tullamore scorched the earth with the exchanges above it. Waterford tried in last year’s All-Ireland final. Limerick had a shape 12 months earlier. Attrition doesn’t work. Kilkenny stay standing. Galway threw pretty much the sink and all the other kitchen appliances at the champions and found most of it bouncing back at them on Saturday night.

Those surprising days in 2001 and 2005 when Kilkenny seemed taken aback by the physicality of what was put up to them seem to belong to a bygone age now. Kilkenny are big and game and in the places where they aren’t big they are called Tommy Walsh. Enough said. They sail close to the wind when needs require it and they hurl when they have to.

Saturday, if the GAA had the instincts of Barnum, would have been billed as an arm- wrestling match between King Henry and the pretender from the west, young Canning of Portumna. As such it fascinated. Canning is perhaps the best since Ring at ramming home goals from close-in frees, but his effort on Saturday for his second goal of the game seemed to mark the point where Kilkenny came to grips with him at last. He was ill-served by the lack of variety in Galway’s play and it would keep future full-back lines a little more honest if smarter ball stuck to the sticks of Niall Healy and Damien Hayes out in the corners.

Galway can hold their heads high after the Leinster debut but they need a few hours back at the drawing board. And much as it would have been delightful for them to have brought down a buffalo the size of Kilkenny on their first shooting expedition, the chances are that the rest of the hurling world would have cursed them for it. Kilkenny, if they are to be beaten at all this year, won’t be beaten twice. Wounding them on Saturday night would have caused them to come back more driven and stronger later in the summer.

As for the leading men? As Joe waned, Shefflin came out to shine on Saturday. He was always an influence on the game but when Kilkenny wanted him most he was there and wherever they wanted him he was there too, moving across the business district in the middle of the pitch and taking scores with relative ease amidst the haste and hustle.

It was a remarkable performance by Kilkenny from the period when they were five points down early in the second half. There was something grisly about watching them absorb the momentum which Galway were riding on and then slowly devour them.

The puck-outs stopped dropping into Galway paws and Colm Callanan’s attempts at varying the delivery grew more and more desperate as the middle third became an exclusion zone. Slowly Kilkenny pinned them back. And when they finally killed Galway it wasn’t with a lethal dosage of goals but with 10 points, little darts which poisoned the bloodstream and put Galway under slowly.

So Kilkenny prepare for Dublin and, in all honesty, won’t be tossing and turning too much despite Dublin’s game performance against them in the league. The challenge for Dublin and any other team who Kilkenny will play this year is to come up with something a little more inventive than mere muscle.

As is the fashion, especially in football but increasingly so in hurling, most teams tend to imitate the brand leaders rather than innovate themselves or cut the cloth to suit the players they have. Yet the breakthrough teams have always brought something different. Loughnanes Clare brought a primal intensity. Offaly in the 90s were sprites. Cork responded to the muscular era which preceded their return in 1999 with a short game team which had Seánie McGrath and Joe Deane in the full-forward line.

Most of the viable contenders left in the championship are sides who will bring plenty of beef to the party. What hurling needs is a team with the conviction of the Cork side who graced the early part of this decade with their domestically unpopular but effective short game, or the Offaly side of Pilkington, Whelahan et al whose ground hurling, flicks and touches and dodges left bigger teams flailing after them.

Perhaps Kilkenny will be brought low by a team with broad shoulders, but one imagines what they fear more is a team equipped with speed and insouciance and a game plan that makes the ball do the work. Beating Kilkenny is pretty much like losing to Kilkenny. It is a thing of the mind. If any side ends Kilkenny’s dominance this year it will be one with a cheeky sense of itself and a dogged belief in a game plan that keeps Kilkenny chasing ghosts. We haven’t seen a candidate fitting that description yet.

Just space at the end of a fine day for Dublin hurling for a fógra for Wexford’s finest, Diarmuid Gizzy Lyng. Gizzy has been running a hurling summer camp with a difference for a couple of years now down in Piercetown. Given the revival in the Irish language and the revival in hurling it is a wonder nobody else has thought of putting the two together before. Gizzy’s hurling camp through Irish is held every summer for teenagers from all around the country at the St Martin’s Centre and every year attracts some of the game’s greats for coaching sessions. As well as fitness coaches and dieticians. All that and dancing and crack too. As Gaeilge.

This year’s attendees will be under the expert tutelage of Gizzy Lyng himself, Camogie All-Ireland and League champion corner back Clare O’Connor and Wexford’s own Anthony Cleary, current coach of the Dublin under-14 team.

Also visiting will be John Mullane, Damien Fitzhenry, Cha Fitzpatrick, Eddie Brennan, Eoin Quigley, Rory McCarthy, Mary Leacy and George O’Connor among others to give lessons on key areas of the game such as catching, shooting under pressure, and effective tackling.

The camp is aimed at the 13 to 17 age group and will be held in Piercestown complex from the 6th to the 10th of July.

The price is just €80. There are only 60 places available. Call 086-1023833. Better than having your bored teen sitting in the bedroom all summer now isn’t it?