Cream of the cats keep their cool

Cats with tiger stripes. Fat cats barely sated with five goals. Cats with an air about them. Cream on their whiskers. Leinster champions again. Cats.

D J Carey. Not a cool cat. The heat has beaten up the old guys and, as a former retiree, D J lumps himself in with the gerontocracy. D J is sweating and spent, but this is a good day. The feeling is back. He's just scored 2-3 for the second championship afternoon on the trot. Cream.

"With Offaly there is no stage when you think you're away with it," he says. "Now, I admit, I was a bit surprised when they had a 21-yard free and put it over the bar. If it was Kilkenny in the same situation the panic would be there and we'd be going for goal. The new guys were brilliant today, and the established guys weren't too bad either. The heat was tough on us though."

Eleven goals in two games. Soccer commentators would note that these days Kilkenny are scoring goals for fun. Whatever.

"We got a good start, similar to the last day. A goal is a killer blow to any team. We were lucky enough to get them early. We thought going in against Laois we played a good team. After that everyone knocked Laois, but they'd run everyone close in the league, including ourselves, and they are a good team. "On the day we got the better of them and it was the same today. We could be playing them in the All-Ireland final again. We'd like to be there anyway."

Brian Cody's apple cheeks are subdued beneath the curved brim of his baseball cap. Players say there is something about him. Intangible. Just a way of carrying himself. He looks at the floor, speaks softly and evasively. You can see what they mean.

"Highly competitive today," he says. "Offaly made us work hard. I expected we would play well and we did. We try to achieve high standards. We're dealing with good players and talented players. Talented players who work hard can achieve what they want. A very good player who doesn't work is a very ordinary player.

"Today was a sapping game," he continues. "It takes seven days to get over that match, and the losers have to come back in two weeks. We're glad to have avoided that. The whole thing is about the team corner forwards: chasing back, hooking and blocking is as important as them putting the ball over the bar."

Cody is reluctant to talk about his younger players. Just part of the team is about as special as his words allow them to be.

John Power, an old soldier and returned provider, can fend for himself though. Power is influential every time he plays for Kilkenny. He had nothing to prove yesterday or any other day; he came back because he wanted to play hurling.

Power, a couple of yards away, is doing the thing we most associate with his post-match cameos. He's having the surface of his skull examined by a doctor. He finds the source of blood. One stitch, he says. Right so, says Power, and continues chatting with the journalists.

"I was slow to settle against Laois, but that was a pressure game for me and it was all ifs: if I could still do this or if I was over the hill. I got that donkey off my back and I was very relaxed going out there today, because I didn't have to prove that I couldn't stand in Croke Park with any other man."

So the point to prove business is no longer a factor?

"That's gone. I don't have anything to prove. Any day I jumped up on the big stage I was able for, well, I didn't perform on the big stage but I put 100 per cent into it on the big stage and nobody could ask for more. Any man that puts in 100 per cent, well he's as valuable as DJ in his way."

In the Offaly dressingroom there is little grief. You have an ailment, you should get cured. That's the level of the disturbance to the team mood. The Whelahan brothers are lingering. Michael Bond is holding court. Talking up Kilkenny.

"Five goals against the Offaly backs and goalie? That's phenomonal. Some of our players have missed twothirds of our training. Maybe two weeks isn't enough for us to turn it around, but we'll have a big say if we get through the next day. The players who haven't trained didn't last the pace today."