All-Ireland SHC semi-final: Kilkenny v Tipperary, Croke Park, Sunday, 4pm – Live on RTÉ 2
One of the GAA’s principal rivalries – if not its most bitter – has been reimagined for the 2020s. The counties have not met in championship since 2019 having been all but perennial antagonists for the previous decade, so the friction levels are turned down a bit.
Not that you would have known it in the Nowlan Park league encounter in March when four red cards were brandished in the space of a few minutes. On that occasion, Tipp were easy winners, as befitted a team with a two-man advantage.
This weekend it comes down to a choice between the experience of Kilkenny and the youthful reinvigoration of their opponents.
The Leinster champions are fresh from their sixth straight title after a low-stress provincial canter but this has been the way the county has generally presented in recent years – their place in the final rarely threatened and, apart from the last-gasp win over Galway two years ago, the actual deciders not especially taxing either.
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It has still been enough for more than competitive displays in All-Ireland semi-finals, two wins over Clare and last year’s failure to finish off the same opponents.
In 2022, Brian Cody’s last year as manager, he gave an insight into how Kilkenny had approached the semi-final with Clare.
“Up to the Leinster final we were playing more or less every week, which gives limited time – no time, really – for training.”
It is easy to see why Limerick prized the direct access to the last four and the month free of distractions for training and coaching purposes.
Derek Lyng’s preparations have shown few signs of deviation from this approach. In what is his third year, he is able to bring a full-bore selection to this weekend. There are some rumblings of disquiet over Martin Keoghan’s hamstring but he is named to start.
He would be a stark loss, as even if he hasn’t quite maintained his spectacular league form, his uninhibited ability to take on defenders is a major item in the team’s weaponry.
Eoin Cody is back in the team as well after a long absence but presumably he has got back up to speed in recent weeks.
Kilkenny retain just two players form the last team to win an All-Ireland, Eoin Murphy and the eternal TJ Reid. The latter’s dead ball striking remains a primary source for the Leinster champions but in play he is also still a handful even if his trademark ball-winning ability is less of a threat to Tipperary’s defence than the speed of an attack such as Cork’s.
Lyng has named the same forwards as started against Clare last year, a testament to their consistency but also evidence of a standing concern in the county – that panellists aren’t exerting enough pressure on first-team players.
His counterpart, Liam Cahill, is in the happy position of having hit his obvious targets for the year, progress in both league and championship while incorporating younger talent from the under-21/20 generation that he himself cultivated.
The backs have stalwart pillars in Ronan Maher and Michael Breen and for all their new generation dynamic, half of the 2019 All-Ireland winners are still involved either starting or on the bench.
Jake Morris and Andrew Ormond have been exceptional up front, with experienced backup in the reborn John McGrath and Jason Forde. If centrefield looks less settled, it’s not Kilkenny’s strongest sector either.
The lack of reference points makes this a hard call. There is every reason to trust Kilkenny’s remarkably consistent delivery at this level more than the Tipperary rebuild and to be wary of one of those blazing phases when they go to town on a team.
But Tipp have had the lessons of two incinerations in Pairc Uí Chaoimh when they chased a lost cause regardless. In the league final they actually outscored Cork in the second half, and with 14 men in Munster they still managed to create goal chances.
Kilkenny won’t present them with the tracts of space they got from Galway but in a coin-toss decision, maybe their hard-won momentum can carry them a little farther.
Verdict: Tipperary
