Rumblings from way out west a din now for Cody

All-Ireland SHC quarter-final/Galway v Kilkenny: Keith Duggan on how it took Galway a long time to see themselves as Kilkenny's equals and there's no going back

For five years, Kilkenny and Galway have produced championship hurling games of such thrilling, schizophrenic and unreadable quality that the best that can be said of today's meeting in Thurles is it is anyone's guess.

For Kilkenny, that sense of enigma reflects the admission from Brian Cody that the black and amber machine is not firing on all cylinders here in mid-July and it is also because the recent ambushes Galway have sprung on the Marble county remain fresh in the memory.

For Galway, though, the fact that they are preparing for yet another meeting with Kilkenny with a 50-50 shot and, perhaps, the faintest psychological edge, is a measure of how times have changed. For many years, the hurling relationship between Kilkenny and Galway was rough and affectionate, the older-and-younger-brother syndrome, with Kilkenny dispensing irregular beatings to the Connacht men while viewing their gathering strength and attempts to break through with admiration and respect. As Kieran Brennan, a Kilkenny man who hurled on the Galway borders during the tremulous years of the late 1970s, put it, "Kilkenny hurling people would have always regarded Galway hurling with warmth and we would have been one hundred per cent behind them. But when we played them, there was always a real intensity to the games. There was an edge there."

Brennan was a Kilkenny regular while studying in UCG when attached to the Defence Forces and became a member of an outstanding 1978 Fitzgibbon Cup team featuring Joe Connolly, Pat Fleury, the late Niall McInerney, Joe McDonagh and Frank Houlihan, a Kilkenny man who captained the county to the 1986 national league title. The team were coached by Cody's brother Eamon.

Migrations west by black and amber stickmen are traditionally rare. Jim Brophy's career in the Army brought him to Renmore barracks and he played in the post-war Galway team, and Martin O'Shea was posted to Castlegar Garda station and represented both that seminal club and the maroon county in hurling.

But crossovers between Kilkenny and Galway were not common.

In his introduction to Frank Burke's wonderful pictorial history, All-Ireland Glory, Joe Connolly remembers the awe he felt when Kilkenny's Jim Treacy unexpectedly arrived in the family sittingroom during the races at Ballybrit one July day in the 1960s.

Kilkenny hurling had an aura and those glinting amber stripes seemed to take an almost fatalistic hold on the Galway imagination when Frank Burke's generation bashed against the iron gates of the hurling establishment in the 1970s.

The league semi-final win against Kilkenny in 1975 was rightly heralded as a great triumph, but in retrospect, it was a chimera as Galway were repelled by Kilkenny in the All-Ireland finals of 1975 and 1979 and the semi-final of 1978.

"We trained ferociously during that period and (coach) Inky Flaherty's great refrain was, 'belief in yourself'," Burke says now.

"Belief. In the league win, Kilkenny were not long back from America and they would have attributed that as the reason they lost. The Kilkenny players kept very tight-lipped after that game. But it certainly alerted them to us and we just couldn't crack them in the championship, they were more solid.

"The way I would characterise the relationship between the counties then is that it was probably quite antagonistic between the supporters. There would have been a fair bit shouted back and forth.

"But I think the Kilkenny players had plenty of respect for us. I remember Pat Henderson taking me aside after the 1975 All-Ireland and going through where he thought we went wrong. PJ Qualter and Nickey Orr would have been good friends, likewise Joe Connolly and Frank Cummins. But I do wonder if maybe we had sufficient belief to overcome the Kilkenny reputation then. And I often wonder if, when we finally won the All-Ireland in 1980, if we had been playing Kilkenny instead of Limerick, would it have been different."

(Equally, Kieran Brennan sometimes muses over whether history would have been altered if a strong under-21 Kilkenny team had not been caught by Laois in 1978. Galway won the trophy that year with a team that included Conor Hayes and added to the growing momentum in the county).

The invincibility of Kilkenny hurling was casually passed on to hurlers of Burke's generation. Larry Doyle, who trained a famous Turloughmore team that dominated the Galway championship between 1961 and 1966, used to tell of the 1947 All-Ireland semi-final in Birr. On the cycle over, the team got caught in such a downpour they tied their socks to the handlebars to dry. They played superbly and were a point up when the referee, Dinny Costello of Tipperary, seemed to blow for full-time, prompting a pitch invasion.

In fact, he had whistled for a free, and during five added minutes Kilkenny restored parity before Jim Langton clipped the winner.

Galway cycled home and Kilkenny went on to meet Cork in what would become one of the most celebrated finals ever played. This was an excellent Galway team, which had defeated a Munster team in the Railway Cup final the same year, but they could not get the breakthrough against the black and amber.

"That was a star-studded Munster team, with Christy Ring on it as well," remembers Jimmy Duggan. "Seven or eight of that team were still there when we did beat Kilkenny in the 1953 All-Ireland semi-final, including Jimmy Brophy, who had great craft. I don't know what it was about that day that was different from the others, we just stuck with Kilkenny and John Killeen got a couple of goals for us. It was a massive result for us as was the occasion, to get to the All-Ireland final. And even though we lost to Cork, it was significant for us to have at least played in one because hundreds of Galway lads had hurled without ever experiencing that."

That was Galway's first All-Ireland appearance since 1929, and although they would be bridesmaids again in 1955 and 1958 (when they went through on "byes"), that was it until 1975. PJ Molloy remembers those years of slogging against Kilkenny as dour and frustrating battles, with Galway struggling to match the imposing and flinty Kilkenny defence.

"They were not a team I enjoyed playing. Our games against Cork always seemed more open; there was that bit more room to express yourself. Over that period, 1975 to 1985, Galway hurling underwent a change in style and probably in mindset to eventually overcome Kilkenny."

Strangely, Kieran Brennan, centre half forward on the famous 1982/1983 Kilkenny team that won back-to-back All-Ireland titles, has the same abiding memory of those games as Molloy. He was amused to hear the Athenry man found Kilkenny as physical as he found Galway.

"I would subscribe to that theory now. When you look back, I suppose those Kilkenny teams were founded on really teak-tough defensive units, although I like to think we hurled as well. A criticism I always had of Galway, though, was that they seemed intent to deliver a message to Kilkenny through physical means.

"That kind of game was anathema to me but I also felt it was a distraction to Galway. Because they didn't need to do it. But it was because the rivalry was so intense and Galway were striving for that breakthrough.

"When they beat us in the 1986 semi-final, we were well prepared but they obviously surprised us with Cyril Farrell's two-man full-forward line and we never countered that. It was a nasty old game but hugely important from Galway's point of view.

"And that Galway team, as well as being full of great hurlers, crucially developed the mental strength to put consistent championship performances together. They probably should have won three in a row and could have won four in row."

PJ Molloy believes the deep residual fear or respect, the feeling that beating Kilkenny was somehow impossible, vanished that day. The following September the counties met in the All-Ireland final, the maroon team rising, Kilkenny on the verge of retreat, and it was the Connacht men's day in a slow-burning, taut game that ended 1-12 to 0-9.

By then, Galway were about to become entangled in a rivalry with Tipperary so passionate and vitriolic that any real or perceived slights Galway people had accumulated through the losing decades were directed at the Premier county.

In the last two decades, the relationship has been more even. A fine Kilkenny side featuring the O'Connors, Pat O'Neill, Liam Simpson and a young DJ Carey beat a young Galway team twice in the back-to-back championship years of 1992/1993. Four years after that, Carey went supernova in Thurles when Kilkenny erased a nine-point half-time deficit to stun a promising if fragile Galway team. Kieran Brennan's brother Nickey, now GAA president, was manager that day.

"Was he?" marvels Kieran. "God, yeah, he would have been. That was DJ's day. But that game kind of demonstrated the persistence and the expectation Kilkenny would have as a county. With the exception of 2003 against Cork, Kilkenny teams rarely die out on a field. You would always be thinking that a goal would come. It happened early that day and maybe the traditional doubts got at Galway."

That loss was cataclysmic for Galway, but the next really notable statement they made in the senior championship was against Kilkenny. The unforgettable image of the teenage Richie Murray flaking into black and amber shirts in the torrid opening exchanges of the 2001 semi-final spoke volumes for the changing relationship. Galway and Kilkenny teams were now regular foes at underage level whereas, for instance, Frank Burke never played Kilkenny as a youngster. The kid brother was growing up, becoming more audacious and disrespectful.

Noel Lane's Galway thundered through a Kilkenny team regarded as invincible that day. Last year, Cody had to endure another frustrating day when Galway again hit that crazy, irrepressible mood. In between, Kilkenny stung Galway with a 19-point lesson in the 2004 qualifiers. What had been a monumental struggle to reverse a tradition of Kilkenny superiority had been transformed into something as wild and volatile as a broken electrical cable.

In recent years, Frank Burke toured Kilkenny to compile research for a DVD based on black and amber hurling. He was struck by the warmth of the welcome and how densely packed the county was with hurling treasures. In Tullaroan he drank tea with the Doyle brothers and was shown the 18 All-Ireland medals won by three of them. He met the five Keogh sisters in Tullaroan, each of whom had a son who won an All-Ireland with Kilkenny. He walked through a graveyard and was shown headstones to his left and right of men who won All-Irelands.

"In a county of just 70,000 people, the bloodlines and that tradition are everything. In addition to that, they have developed an underage system which I would say will become a model for all other counties. The main difference I found between Galway and Kilkenny is down there, there is a kind of unity of purpose and togetherness and they have this fantastic legacy to call upon. It is something tremendous, really. But the work that has been done in Galway means we have been able to match them at underage level and the old fear or inhibition or whatever it was we felt just does not apply anymore."

PJ Molloy believes the Kilkenny teams of the last 10 years "have been a joy to watch". Jimmy Duggan marvels that Galway could meet Tipperary, Kilkenny and Cork in the one championship year and come away with two scalps, which, he argues, should give grounds for optimism. Kieran Brennan lists Galway's recent achievements at minor, under-21 and club grades to illustrate that nobody in Kilkenny sees the maroon county as anything but a powerhouse now. The rumbles coming from the west have been growing more insistent over the years. So far, Kilkenny have been the chief victims of Galway's most concerted drive for a first senior All-Ireland championship since 1988. They have been the loose cannon in Cody's illustrious reign.

Tomorrow the rivalry returns to Thurles. Kilkenny and Galway may be the only really mind-blowing cocktail that hurling can offer right now. Nobody can say with any real certainty what is going to happen. That is a far cry from the old days. But the shuddering intensity that PJ Molloy and Kieran Brennan remember from yesteryear will be there in spades. There will still be an edge. Always that.