With 22 minutes gone in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final, Clare were trailing by four points and hunting for goals to shorten the road back. Shane O’Donnell magicked up one of those passages of play where everything seems doomed at all times and yet never quite doomed at the same time. Near-death hurling, never more alive.
When O’Donnell collected possession about 40 metres from goal, he had six Kilkenny players – and the referee – closer to him than his nearest team-mate. He still managed to create a goal chance, playing a one-two with Peter Duggan before putting Mark Rodgers in with only Eoin Murphy to beat.
Or so it seemed. One of the Kilkenny six at the start of the move was Conor Fogarty. When O’Donnell passed off to Duggan, Fogarty got a tackle in on the Clare wing forward. When Duggan passed back to O’Donnell, Fogarty was there to block his route to goal and make him change direction. When O’Donnell sent Rodgers away, it was Fogarty who came flying across to block the shot and put it out for a 65.
In the aftermath of the game, when Kilkenny were through to another final and Clare were gone again, all anyone wanted to talk about was Murphy’s last-gasp save from Duggan in the 73rd minute. But that sort of miracle is a kind of a freak event, even for someone who pulls it off as regularly as the Kilkenny goalkeeper.
Fogarty’s eight-second cameo in the first half is far more the stuff of life. It was a completely sublime intervention. Hang it in the Butler Gallery.
It was, in a nutshell, Kilkennyness. Kilkennyness in its purest form. Fogarty is maybe the least flashy player in a set-up where unflashiness is always prized. This is his 14th season on the Kilkenny panel. He has been nominated for an All Star four times without ever taking home a gong. There’s something almost contrary about that, something damning about what we’re looking for when we’re watching these players.
You only had to keep your gaze on Fogarty after his block on Rodgers last year to see who appreciates him. As he picked himself off the floor, he was accosted – no other word for it – by an assault of attaboys from Murphy, Huw Lawlor, Richie Reid and David Blanchfield. In the course of the move, Fogarty had passed Blanchfield, Reid and Lawlor on his way back to protecting Murphy’s goal. They knew what they saw. Kilkennyness.
Fogarty won’t start against Clare this weekend but we’ll likely see him at some stage. He has come off the bench in each of the past four games so it’s hard to imagine they won’t send for him in the biggest game of the year. Derek Lyng will spot a job that needs doing in midfield or defence and he’ll point Fogarty at the task. He knows what he’ll get when he does.
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Watching last year’s semi-final back this week, it was striking to note once again just how little secret there is to Kilkenny’s ability to do this year after year. For all that the game these days is as much about geometry and stats analysis as anything else, they still go from the same starting point every year. The work and they work and they work again and then, when they’re done working, they keep working some more.
All-Ireland semi-finals are Kilkenny’s thing. Since the turn of the century, they’ve played in 21 of a possible 24. They’ve won 17 and lost four. Between losing to Galway in 2005 and to Waterford in 2020, they played in 11 All-Ireland semi-finals and came out the other side of them all. The song remained the same through every game.
Kilkennyness. Jackie Tyrrell tells a story about JJ Delaney’s famous hook on Séamus Callanan in the 2014 final replay against Tipperary. When they sat in the glow of victory afterwards and everyone in the country was going on about the piece of supreme defending that Delaney pulled off, the Kilkenny players made a point of bigging up Pádraig Walsh’s intervention after the ball had gone to the floor.
Callanan had been foiled by Delaney hooking his hurley from behind but the ball hadn’t gone dead and the Tipp goal-hoarder still had a chance to bury the loose sliotar to the net. Walsh hadn’t been involved in the play but had run 40 metres on the off-chance that there’d be something for him to do, and now he got his body between Callanan and the ball, allowing Kieran Joyce to come away with it.
Watch it back some day you’re at nothing. Walsh comes from the clouds, putting in a sprint he couldn’t have known would be of any use. Delaney has been asked about that hook countless times since he retired. On each occasion, he mentions Walsh’s intervention, pointing out that had Callanan scored on the rebound, the hook wouldn’t ever be mentioned.
Kilkenny are, very obviously, more than just Kilkennyness. But for all of Murphy’s acrobatics and TJ’s accuracy and Eoin Cody’s ruthlessness, the seam running through them is the same now as it was when it backboned all those All-Irelands under the previous regime. It hasn’t been enough to win Liam MacCarthy lately – if they aren’t up the steps in a fortnight, it will make for the longest All-Ireland famine in the county since the 1950s.
But it has been enough to account for Clare these past two years. To prevent it becoming three in a row, Brian Lohan’s side has to find a way over, around or through the Kilkennyness that’s about to come their way.
Easier said than done.
