Kilkenny come through the crucible

WITH THE seconds swirling down the faucet we thought we had fished the final drama from the torrent at Semple yesterday. Richie Hogan, who has been poised with his credentials ready beneath the lintel of this Kilkenny side for so long, had the chance to to step up and seize the sort of footnote reserved for league final heroics.

Hogan stood over a free 75 yards from goal and right in front of the Tipp bench. Semple Stadium was crackling and spitting with tension. He couldn’t, could he? He did. He put it over. ‘Kilkenny’s league’, we said, and shook our heads in exhausted wonder.

And still it went on. An easier free at the other end. Séamus Callinan bowing in the cauldron to an even younger man, Noel McGrath. Bends. Lifts. Strikes. And into extra-time he took us.

This was a league final which failed to do what it said on the tin. Only 17,098 souls turned up to see what we assumed would be another demonstration of Kilkenny’s armoury. It had been just a few weeks since they had beaten Tipp by 17 points. Not tempting.

Instead we got an epic, with Kilkenny edging through 2-26 to 4-17.

It was the best league final since these sides met six years ago. Kilkenny won that day, too, and the will and resolution they displayed back then was what got them through yesterday.

When Henry Shefflin scored a couple of early points to put expression on the scoreboard of his side’s loose-limbed confidence in the sunshine we feared the worst for Tipp. By the eighth minute, however, the world had changed and Tipp were throwing defiance and bravery at Kilkenny.

It began with the the rarest of sights, the sort of thing which should prompt letters to newspapers. A Kilkenny defender being mugged in his own garden. James Ryall, no bantam, got turned over.

James Woodlock got the ball over the line into the net. Seconds later Shane McGrath manufactured an overhead point while effectively being held in custody, offering further evidence that the times might be a changing.

And next thing, John O’Brien was haring through. Bang. Eight minutes gone. Tipp had been through for two goals, were standing up physically and Brian Hogan was being stretchered off.

His replacement, Martin Comerford, came on and with Tipp’s Declan Fanning got a yellow card and went straight back off.

We began to sense it. There is no such thing as feline infallibility.

In the end, of course, Kilkenny prevailed. In the dying seconds of the second half of extra-time Eddie Brennan concluded matters with a point from his 45 which was half way between a grace note and a triumphant fanfare.

Thus Kilkenny won their 14th title, but the bauble presented to Shefflin meant little. All the context was in the play.

Tipperary went away with a hardening sense of what Dublin had suggested to the world a few weeks ago. To play Kilkenny you need the confidence to put it up to them physically for 70 minutes.

You need to play in the style and intensity of Kilkenny themselves.

And Kilkenny, in a big year for them with a possible fourth All-Ireland in a row looming? They will be glad so many questions were asked. The league campaign had a surreal, ersatz quality to it and despite the novelty of some of the margins his side ran in Brian Cody won’t have enjoyed it one little bit.

Yesterday, though, Kilkenny came through the crucible. Tipp put four goals past them and hurled with the physicality of champions. Everything that could have gone wrong for Kilkenny went wrong.

But still they came through. When everything else was evened up they had the hurling and the hunger to pull through.

In the end, Cody lifted his black cap and ran his hand back over the expanse of his bald head. He will have wondered what he would learn about his side on a day like this, there have been so few learning opportunities lately. He learned they are still the same men he believed them be. And that this summer nothing will come any easier. Just like he believed, too.