8 is my estimate.
6 (Six).
- This level of dominance can’t be sustained.
6…
Who is the appointed person to tally up the results in 2025?
If only there was an example of a team with this level of dominance we could discuss.
Oh look, there is, which is why we have this thread. what would your answer have been in 2000? We keep saying it year after year that this is the end, but the fucker keeps finding players in form, this could go on for eternity.
In answer to the thread title - 5. Three of which will be won in the next four years, then they’ll have a barren period, a renaissance will occur in hurling where Wexford and Limerick will win back to back titles, then Kilkenny will be back and it will all start all over again as Tommy Walsh begins his 25 year tenure as Kilkenny coach.
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People go on about the natural ability of Kilkenny hurlers but they had about 5 players on the starting 15 the other day who don’t hold the hurl correctly and can barely hit the ball - @Big_Dan_Campbell has been mentioning dirty hands for years.
And as @caoimhaoin pointed out way, way back, their strength, conditioning, movement etc is critical to their victories and that’s down to Mick Dempsey (see “ruck ball” discussion on other thread).
Their superior fitness and strength in turn gives them a mental edge coming down the home straight and they’re more composed and efficient than opponents. It’s actually a by-product of their fitness.
Combine that with Cody’s man management and it makes up for the fact that they’re not very good at hurling. They’ve got absolutely nothing coming through in terms of young talent either - even Wexford routinely beat the shit out of them at U21 these days but the key ingredients brought to the table by Dempsey and Cody will see them remainingly fairly dominant at senior even with diminishing raw materials to work with.
6 (six).
I think the shape and style Kilkenny play also helps. I don’t think Walsh or Joyce are anything more than servicable I/C hurlers but the fact that both can pretty much just sit and hold their positions and the midfield and half forwards will funnel back to take their men and cover them means that they are very seldom exploited and due them sitting deep they then give the full backline extra cover. But it is due to having top class forwards like Larkin, Reid, Hogan and Power who are just so composed on the ball and such excellent readers of the game it means that they are not dependant on quality ball as other forward lines. Thankfully Power is all but done now and Larkin has only a couple more years on him as I think Kilkenny have come back to the pack but are still the top dogs, albeit nowhere as dominant a side as they were during the 4 in a row and i expect the gap to close further over the next couple of years. They will still probably be the most successful team over the next decade but I wouldn’t expect then to be as successful as the last decade. They will have to make do with 4 all irelands or so over the next decade
Two. Cody will probably get a heart attack breaking a hurley over a table in the dressing room.
I will go with 4 aswell.
I expect the minute Cody leaves the standard will drop off hugely. You saw what happened in 2013 when he was unavailable to guide the team for several weeks due to health issues. The whole team looked like they all lost form at the same time and made very hard work of making any progress at all. I don’t see an obvious successor there at the moment. And whoever does get the job has a horrible task of living in his shadow. Assuming Cody stays on we will remain the team to beat each year.
We need replacements for Michael Fennelly, Larkin and Richie Power but other than those 3 we have a pretty young squad. We won this year without Jackie Tyrell. I’m not sure Prendergast is the long term answer there.
Five years from now God knows what the team looks like. Hopefully guys like Kevin Kelly, Tommy Walsh, Liam Blanchfield, Darragh Joyce and Richie Leahy can make the step up in years to come.
4 would be a tentative guess. And the most important one will be the first one we win without Cody.
Five max
Kilkenny 5, Tipp 2 and Cork 1.
Two shared between Galway, Waterford, Limerick and the rest.
None.
Sure we can’t hurl at all.
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Hopefully none and they will have an 18 year famine like Tipp after their glory days of the late 50s to early 70s. Tipp contested 9 AI finals in that spell and won 6, arguably close to as good a record as Kilkenny’s recent one, as back then there were no second chances and Munster was a cauldron every year. For much of the past 15 years Kilkenny have had to play two matches a year, as the importance of the provincials has declined and the competition in Leinster has been spotty at best. The format of senior IC hurling has become a shambles, with one good game in all of 2015.
I would say 2 for the following reasons. Although it may sound like wishful thinking, I think last Sunday was the last hurrah for Kilkenny’s dominance and they will find it much harder going forward. Although the effort put in in that second half was astonishing, they were helped enormously by the naivety of Galway who played as if they just had to keep doing what worked in the first half, when anyone who has watched a Cody team for the past 15 years should know what to expect. Galway just didn’t have the ruthlessness to finish them off with goals in the first half nor the guile and leadership to change tactics in the second.
For all the strength and conditioning, ruck formation, and perfecting the art of fouling without penalty, it still comes down to hurlers and Kilkenny have had an abundance of fabulous hurlers. While they will smother a game when they have to like last Sunday, more often than not they beat you because they are simply more skilful and craftier hurlers. The sequence of play around the 55th minute when both sides were going at it hammer and tongs for 2 minutes, and then a sublime handpass from Reid to Larkin and over the bar. While they all fought like demons, the players who led by example were Mick Fennelly, Reid and Larkin, as you would expect senior players to do. Sadly Galway didn’t have those three or four leaders to take control of the game and drive them forward, save for David Burke arguably the best player on the field for the 70+ minutes. Joe waiting for ball at FF that never came in that second half was infuriating when he had been so influential out the field in the latter stages of the first half. What the hell were we thinking about on the sideline leaving him there isolated while the game slipped away from us?
I agree though that Cody is the key man and as long as he is there he will have them playing the same way. The evidence though is the hurlers that are coming through are not at the standard we have seen for the past 15 years, and when Larkin, Fennelly, Power and eventually Reid and Hogan go who will replace them? Obviously Kilkenny will continue to produce good hurlers as they always have, but history suggests that great teams come and go in cycles. Cody’s brilliance has been to keep their cycle going so long, mainly by his ruthlessness and bullying in demanding 110% or nothing. Slowly but surely though he is running out of ammo, and he must be very tempted to call it a day a la Ferguson, considering the standard he has set, as no successful manager wants to go out on a low.
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Kilkenny are fucked.
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They were being fucked in that first half on Sunday but always seem to find a way to switch positions. Must be the French in them.