In the middle of the second half of the hurling on Sunday, you could see the rain starting to come in sideways and the people in the stands were running for cover. Down in front of the Kilkenny bench, the selectors all grabbed whatever rainwear they were going to stick on but you could see Brian Cody standing there engrossed in the play. Somebody had to tap him on the shoulder and hand him his coat.
I was watching Kilkenny come through that game just with total admiration. Cody, Jackie Tyrrell, JJ Delaney, Henry Shefflin – all these guys. For them still to be going back to the well after all these years is incredible.
Watch those last 10 minutes when it wasn’t about skill or talent or experience but instead about pure desire. If any bit of you was thinking about what you’ve done or what you’ve achieved in those 10 minutes, the game would be lost. But they were busting themselves for every ball. And there, standing on the sideline spitting on his hand, was Cody.
I've often looked at Cody and thought about what it is he has. The best impression I can come up with is just this presence. He is obviously seriously intelligent, he obviously carries major authority around with him. But most managers have that to some extent – otherwise they wouldn't get to be managers in the first place. Cody has something beyond that. Great story There's a great story about Tim Kennelly, soon after he retired from playing for Kerry. This was a man who won five All Irelands, who did everything that was asked of him and more. A giant of a man. But still, before he sat down for a pint at home in Listowel one night soon after finishing up, he went over and pulled the curtain on the pub window. When somebody asked him why, Kennelly replied: "You wouldn't know who'd see, sure they might tell Dwyer".
That’s presence. That’s getting inside the heads of men who have done everything and won everything. Micko had it, Cody has it. You only need to look at the men who were making the plays at the end of that game on Sunday – Tyrrell, Brian Hogan, even Henry getting in a few tackles on a day when he wasn’t shooting the lights out. Would they still be doing that under another manager?
Cody made these men. That’s why there was such emotion from them at the final whistle. They’ve won countless All Ireland semi-finals down the years but have they ever celebrated one like that? Not that I can remember. But the bond between them and Cody looks from the outside to be unbreakable.
These men come along once in a generation. They are hard and cold and you wouldn’t be racing off to go for a pint with them. But they carry that presence that makes you as a player believe in them and believe in yourself. They send you into a game feeling 12 feet tall, they fill you with confidence based on everything you’ve had to do to get into their good books.
Every one of those Kilkenny players is going out to play thinking: "Well I must have some bit of quality about me if Brian Cody thinks I'm worth the jersey". And the ones who aren't starting are killing themselves every night in training to catch his eye. He's able to be ruthless without alienating them, he's able to be hard on them but still encouraging. Divine right And he keeps coming back. Year after year, whether it ends well or ends badly. Last year was a washout and if he'd called it a day afterwards nobody would have batted an eyelid. But instead he went away and got thicker and crosser and came back accepting nothing less than the best.
He told some of his best generals that they were going to have to sit this one out and poured new blood into the team. He made it clear that nothing stands still and nobody has a divine right to be picked. And he drove them on into the summer.
Imagine the satisfaction he must have had going to training last night. I’d have paid a decent amount of money to be in that dressing room just to see how he handled it. I’m betting he took all the emotion out of it and set the mood for the final right away. Next game, next ball, forget about Sunday.
It wouldn’t matter to him that every paper on Monday had a picture of him hugging players left, right and centre. Usually you’d only see those pictures after an All-Ireland final but that wouldn’t put him on the back foot at all. He’d make sure it wouldn’t. Last night would have been the time to establish his distance from those players again.
That’s key. A manager like Cody has his persona and he has to stick to it. It’s very rare the mask slips, if it ever does. I was at a function with him in the Westbury Hotel a few years ago, one of these nights where a group of sportspeople sit on a stage with a presenter looking for yarns. It was me, him and Brian O’Driscoll, with Gabby Logan asking the questions.
Gabby knew who Brian O’Driscoll was obviously but the wonders of Darragh Ó Sé and Brian Cody needed a bit of explaining – even though we were the only ones with county championship medals to our name. I tried to tell a few funny stories and get out of the way but what was most interesting to me was the way that Cody was absolutely the same that night as you’ve seen him every time he’s been on TV.
This was a private function, a corporate thing with maybe 100 people in the room. There was no video, there was no recording. O'Driscoll was obviously very comfortable in that environment and although Gabby kept asking him questions, he kept telling her that Cody was the one we should all be getting onto. He teased and prodded away at him to try and get something different out of him but Cody didn't budge. A gentleman but someone with no interest in letting the world in behind the defence. Pure pleasure He doesn't need or want any of that. There's something machine-like about him. He turned 60 this summer and you can see he's still bursting for road. The pure pleasure he takes in this thing is something to behold. It must be infectious.
Cody is the total personification of what that team is about. Shefflin is 35, he has three kids, he’s spent half his career either injured or recovering from injury. Maybe he’s self-motivated enough to still be going regardless of who the manager is but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Players will stay going as long as they look around the dressing room and convince themselves there’s another medal up for grabs. If you’re Shefflin or Tyrrell or Delaney or Hogan and you see Cody still getting so much out of it, you have to be thinking: “Well, who am I to walk away from this? It’s good enough for Cody at 60 years of age, why wouldn’t it be good enough for me?”
And there can be a bit of fear there as well. What happens if I quit and Cody drags another All-Ireland out of these lads? Could I hack sitting in the Hogan Stand next September while they’re below on the pitch? There’s nothing like winning an All-Ireland – so why wouldn’t I hang around, try and give myself that feeling again?
It goes back to Cody’s presence. Even as a few players retire year after year, he is the constant. He is like the magnet that holds them all in place.
On a certain level, players are selfish in that they want to be playing every game and winning every game because of how it makes them feel.
Cody manages to take that selfishness and use it for the good of the whole group. Players will be bouncing off the ground in Nowlan Park for the next three and a half weeks trying to make the team for the final, conforming to what they know Cody wants to see from them. For those three and a half weeks, he’s the most important person in their lives.
For a fella in his 16th season, that’s some goin.
