Lyng will not be any sort of Cody clone

IN CONTROL: Lyng in action for the Cats in 2002

AIDAN FOGARTY says that Derek Lyng will be no “Cody clone” as he prepares to replace the most successful manager in hurling history.

The six-time AllIreland-winning midfielder was confirmed as the new Kilkenny manager on Thursday on a threeyear term after a three-year stint with the Under-20 team, culminating in this year’s All-Ireland success at that grade.

Various names were linked with the post, including Henry Shefflin, Eddie

Brennan and Martin Fogarty, but Lyng, who also spent six seasons as a selector under Brian Cody, was the early favourite and his Emeralds clubmate and former Kilkenny teammate Fogarty described him as “the obvious choice”.

He said: “Derek has been through it all. He has played with Kilkenny, he’s won AllIrelands with Kilkenny, he has his All Stars. Selected on a senior team as well and obviously most recently managed the Under-20s to AllIreland success so he has all the criteria to be a good manager for Kilkenny and he was the obvious choice.

Personal

“Just on a personal note, he’s from my own club, the Emeralds, and it’s a great honour to have someone from your own club managing the Kilkenny senior hurling team.

“We’re a junior club in north Kilkenny and it just shows the calibre of the man he is and the high regard that he has been held in around Kilkenny.”

Fogarty noted how he and his former Kilkenny teammates had Lyng earmarked for management from a long way out.

“It was just his personality, just his leadership on the field.

There was no nonsense with him and often you’d have meetings before games, big games, and players would have spoken in the dressing room and it’s a hard thing to do, to talk to 30 guys as a player and he would have been the one who spoke a bit.

“Not because he wanted to, Brian Cody asked him to speak sometimes because he’s just a good speaker, tells it how it is.

Teams

“He thinks about the game a good bit and how teams play and things like that.

“Just small personality traits really. That’s why we would have picked him for management.”

And while it’s natural that certain Cody attributes will have rubbed off on Lyng, Fogarty insists he’ll be his own man.

“I certainly don’t see him as a Cody clone.

“I think some players that have played under Cody and go into management, they like to bring certain attributes that they’ve seen in Brian Cody. Derek is his own man.

“Himself and Brian would have similar beliefs in hurling anyway, always had, even when Derek was a player, Brian would have talked to Derek and he wouldn’t talk to too many players so that will tell you the esteem Brian held him in.

“Derek would have his own thoughts on the game but I suppose there are similarities in the belief in what Kilkenny should bring to the table.

“It’s not about Derek Lyng, it’s about Kilkenny. Derek knows that as well and that’s why people respect him.”