Cats hold Galway to set up a replay in Thurles
REALITY check for Galway or yet another sign that Kilkenny haven’t gone away? Perhaps, there was a little bit of both in this disappointing Leinster hurling final, a game that rarely caught fire in front of 40,703 at Croke Park.
The All-Ireland champions arrived in Croker as raging-hot favourites to retain Liam MacCarthy, never mind the Bob O’Keeffe Cup. Brian Cody suggested afterwards that when a team is talked up so much, a small bit of complacency can creep in.
All summer long, they have looked untouchable but yesterday, they showed that, like every other team, they have one or two flaws.
It was a sleepy and sloppy performance from Galway. In an error-ridden first half, they made the majority of the mistakes with their puck-out strategy malfunctioning (it improved after the interval).
Yet, with a few minutes left on the clock, it looked like they had got away with their below-par performance and they were going to win, playing badly.
When Joseph Cooney capitalised on a rare moment of carelessness from Cillian Buckley to fire over his second point of the game, Galway were three points ahead, 0-18 to 0-15. It is from such a position that the Tribesmen have looked so comfortable at managing the clock — at the end of the game.
Instead, it was Kilkenny who finished stronger. John Donnelly and Enda Morrissey, two of the new kids on the block, both fired over from distance before TJ Reid nailed a superb levelling score, his 10th of the afternoon, to ensure that these two teams will do it all over again next Sunday in Thurles.
The Cats deserved another chance. When these teams met in Pearse Stadium five weeks ago, there appeared to be a yawning gap between them with Galway, barely out of second gear, brushing Kilkenny aside. You might do that to a Cody side once, but you will hardly do it twice in such a short space of time.
Galway have been a stone in Cody’s shoe during his two decades in charge. He has only lost 12 Championship games as Kilkenny manager, but a third of those have come against the westerners. He has lost to the Tribesmen more than any other team.
So no wonder he had devised a strategy to hurt Galway at their strong points.
The All-Ireland champions have been overwhelming teams in aerial contests all summer long but Kilkenny were more than a match for them in the air. There were 21 aerial battles over the course of this game — Kilkenny players won 12 of them.
And given that this was the first time that the Cats were back in Croke Park since their full-back line was filleted by Tipperary in the 2016 All-Ireland hurling final, it was telling how well Padraig Walsh, Paul Murphy and Paddy Deegan played as a trio.
The Galway full-forward line still managed to get seven points from play — four from the outstanding Niall Burke, who was his team’s best player. But Conor Cooney and Conor Whelan came into this game as two of the front-runners for Hurler of the Year and neither were able to exert their customary influence on proceedings here.
At the other end of the field, Daithí Burke’s battle with Walter Walsh was the only thing that threatened to bring a turgid first half to life.
Billy Ryan nailed two lovely points from play in the first half of his Championship debut and that helped Kilkenny go in at halftime, a point up, 0-8 to 0-7.
Having pointed their way to last year’s All-Ireland title, Galway forwards have developed more of an eye for goal this summer and the feeling was that if they could raise one green flag, they might stretch for home.
Within a minute of the restart, Whelan got sight of the Kilkenny goal but his effort was saved brilliantly by Eoin Murphy. They wouldn’t get a sniff of another goal-scoring opportunity.
As ever with Kilkenny, Reid’s dead-eyed accuracy from placed balls was keeping them in the game. When Ger Aylward got his only point of the game in the 47th minute, to put Kilkenny back into a one-point lead, it was only his team’s fourth effort from play.
Galway strung together five of the next six points, so by the 57th minute when Joe Canning converted a free, they had opened their biggest lead of the day, three points.
This was the cue for James Maher to come storming into the game around the middle of the field — he nailed a lovely score of his own — as Kilkenny grimly hung on to Galway’s coat-tails.
It may be a new Kilkenny but they have the same old values of hard work and honesty of effort. And with a few players that can hurl a bit, too. The second act in Semple Stadium promises to be interesting.