They won the year at around tea-time on Saturday evening in Ireland. They won it when tables were being set in thousands of houses and the pubs were dense with an early evening crowd enjoying the novelty of an All-Ireland hurling final replay and as the street buskers packed away their instruments.
They won it as the shutters were coming down on Henry Street and the stragglers in Croke Park made their way back to the seats, zipping flies and wolfing hot dogs.
Kilkenny won this latest All-Ireland championship, their 35th, in the fast minutes after half-time while the rest of Ireland barely noticed. Brian Cody's voice ringing in their ears, the players applied to Tipperary that ramped-up intensity and clinical skill which no opponent can withstand.
Restart and fast-forward
They won it by means both prosaic and magnificent. Kilkenny trailed by two points, 0-8 to 1-07, at the beginning of the second half and then set about righting that in a burst of white fury. Within 90 seconds of the restart, Colin Fennelly forced a brilliant save from Tipperary's Darren Gleeson. Then messrs Reid and Power dispatched two frees.
Already, Kilkenny's positional twist, with the above free-takers moving into the half-forward line and Fennelly in front of goal, had begun to exert unbearable pressure on the Tipperary rearguard. After the restart, Michael Fennelly, an unstoppable force all through, scooped up a ball and set his team in motion again. Colin Fennelly met a Tipp shoulder squarely and lobbed a point. There was Fennelly again at the end of a low Kieran Joyce clearance, dancing into space and tapping over another.
Just five minutes had passed and the Cats were two points clear and, before anyone had time to absorb it, they were on the bend for home.
"This one is the sweetest now . . . because it was on today. Each one is the sweetest when it happens," said Brian Cody said of Kilkenny's 10th championship win under his omniscient watch.
Reluctant genius
They have this unfathomable facility, Cody's hurling teams, for sensing when exactly they should kill teams off. You could see it as early as the 40th minute as Richie Power, that reluctant genius, carried the ball down the right wing, looking to square it, looking for goals.
This was when Kilkenny clarified the terms of engagement. In truth, they had done so from the beginning, when Jackie Tyrrell and Eoin Larkin blocked two Tipp clearances and then John Power hooked Brendan Maher as he tried to connect. The message was clear: there would be no space for Tipp's dreamy passing-and-shooting game to flourish.
“I thought the standard of defending today was absolutely magnificent – the closing down, the blocking, at various ends of the field,” said Cody.
“It is not too difficult to play when you have the ball, in a funny way. The trick is to get the ball back.”
And that is how they won it: 70 minutes of depthless desire to deny the Premier men even one second of uncontested possession. Kieran Joyce, the Rower Inistioge man, and Padraig Walsh led a frighteningly dominant Kilkenny defence.
JJ Delaney, who entered elite company by winning his ninth All-Ireland medal, slowed down only to right a dislocated finger. Tommy Walsh joined him. Delaney's delicate first half-hook on Séamus Callanan as the Drom' flier bore down on goal was a highlight of the game. "A magnificent piece of defending because we are so often told our defenders are slow," quipped Cody mischievously.
Through moments like that, Kilkenny defenders set the tone. That Eamonn O’Shea’s men managed to produce 2-14 through that storm is a testament to their resolve. The winners scored 2-17, an agonisingly close difference. Tipp hurling homes must be in despair. This is the eighth time they have met Kilkenny in the Cody era and the seventh defeat.
No county has offered a sterner examination of Kilkenny's reign, but these losses must be crushing. They were brave and at times brilliant here. The only thing to trump Shane McGrath's first point was his third score. Kieran Bergin and Brendan Maher didn't blink through the worst of the Kilkenny pressure and Séamus Callanan pilfered two goals to keep Tipp hopes alive. But all momentum was with Kilkenny and when the goals came, the Power brothers from Carrickshock were the source.
By the time John, Richie's kid brother wheeled away in 64th minute celebration, the day had a familiar look and sound and smell. Tipp people knew it, even before Henry Shefflin entered the day, on his way to being the first and only hurler to win a 10th All-Ireland medal; on his way to Arcadia. You could all but genuflect.
“You can sit here and talk about what happened but they are an outstanding team,” said Eamon O’Shea.
The Tipp manager is an economics professor but when it comes to hurling, he is a romantic, a visionary. He rebuilt a young Tipp team of fragile morale and reshaped a collective capable of living with, if not actually beating, the finest team to ever grace a hurling championship. No team could ask for a more loyal manager.
Grace in defeat
“My belief is that we left the championship a better place,” O’Shea said when the field emptied, plainly hurting but gracious to the last.
“I can’t tell you how hard the team worked to try and be the best they could. It doesn’t come out in results and you can’t report it and it doesn’t turn up up on the scoreline, but I can only say that they certainly are a credit to sport and, in my view, to Tipperary hurling, albeit they didn’t get the result today. I mean, I lived with those guys.”
Kilkenny and Cody march on, seemingly oblivious to the normal laws of time.
Hate them if you want. Love them if you want. It makes no difference: you cannot deny their enduring magnificence.
