'We take hurling seriously to be honest'

Not far off now. The championship that is. It might not feel like it but today is the start of summer. Kilkenny winning another National League title is hardly a big deal (don't they win it every year?) but manager Brian Cody stood by his team's recent form.

Cody is not usually one for the soundbite, but his opinion on why Kilkenny play better than most in spring is an early contender for quote of the season.

"At the start of the league we were sort of heading into the unknown. We were in transition and we still are in transition. There is an awful lot of talk that we play the league seriously. We take hurling seriously, to be honest. We take matches seriously and our players train very hard to get on to the team and stay on the team. That's what it's all about. We are delighted today."

In Kilkenny they take hurling seriously.

Sometimes reflecting on a game can be simplified down to one performance. Henry Shefflin finished with 2-6. "He is a master craftsman," agreed Cody. "That's the size of it. He has been and he will be. He had an awful lot of support there. Take Derek Lyng, and he was substituted into the second half, but I thought in the first half his workrate was absolutely immense. We needed fresh legs but I thought he was superb."

Cody now sees Limerick as contenders for the championship. What gives him some solace is yesterday's opponents are further down the line in terms of championship preparation.

"Limerick are two weeks off the championship and they were showing it there today. It's terrific for us. First of all we consider it an honour to win the league. Also it is huge preparation for the championship.

"They were short a top-class forward (Mark Keane) but the fella who came in (Barry Foley) was a top-class forward as well, I thought."

Joe McKenna went negative. The Limerick manager paid his dues to the Kilkenny performance but was highly critical of the refereeing of Cork's Diarmuid Kirwan. "The decisions of the referee were a bit harsh. You train for nine months, all you want is fair play. I don't think we got it today. We are coming here in nearly two weeks' time and we just need somebody who will be fair to Tipperary and be fair to us. That's all we ask for. No more."

What stuck in McKenna's craw was the third Kilkenny goal, coming up to the hour mark. That made it 3-8 to 0-11 and effectively decided the destination of the league title.

"The lad dropped his hurley. It's a free out . . . That's the goal that turned the whole game. In the first half he gave six frees in a row to Kilkenny. Any frees we got were in our full-back line. Saying all that, Kilkenny are a strong side and they are rebuilding too but I was very happy with our performance."

One thing McKenna was happy about was the progress made in the previous 12 months. The panel, which still contains many All-Ireland under-21 winners, went into the previous Munster championship unsettled. Now there is a united front. "Ah, there is no comparison. We're going in with a lot of confidence. I know today we lost but it is a league final against one of the top two teams in the country. Their experience got them through. We're learning."

There goes the national league. Críochnaithe.

Now all Limerick have to do is transfer recent form to the white heat of a championship day. We know Kilkenny will.