STAYING TRUE TO THE CODE
Some guys are not up to being Kilkenny players, says Tyrrell
THERE is a part of Jackie Tyrrell still inside the Kilkenny dressing room which housed him for 13 years. In the two years since retiring, he has busied himself with his media commitments and acclaimed autobiography, but the hurler in him still rages.
It is Tuesday evening and he is racing to training to stretch his 35year-old legs on the James Stephens pitch, but Tipperary are on his mind.
They are coming to town today and more than any other side, they were the team which defined his career.
That shuddering hit on Séamus Callanan in the third minute — it was a foul which Tyrrell would later claim ‘embarrassed’ him — of the 2009 All-Ireland final is probably the most iconic and revealing moment in a modern rivalry dominated by the Cats.
It gave expression to Kilkenny’s belief, articulated in Tyrrell’s book, that when it came down to a battle of physical will, there could only be one winner.
And, as with all warriors, the instinct to fight is the last thing to go.
‘Ah sure of course I would love to be still there for a game like, but there is always a time to let go,’ he laughs.
But it’s how you let go that matters. One of Tyrrell’s last acts in a Kilkenny dressing room when the light was fading fast on his career was to deliver a half-time speech to his team-mates when they trailed Galway in the 2015 All-Ireland final.
It was hailed as inspirational, but through Tyrrell’s black and amber lenses, he most likely viewed it as speaking the plain truth.
In pretty much the same way, he tosses a question about the danger of Brian Cody’s emerging team being suffocated by expectation, onto the fire.
‘There is a culture and tradition in Kilkenny that when you are part of the county panel, there are expectations and standards to be met.
‘When you come into the dressing room you get the jersey and when you leave you hand it back in a better state. You cherish the thing and the values it represents, hard work and honesty, which is not what Brian demands but what he expects.
‘That pressure is always there for Kilkenny hurlers and it is not for everyone; some people are not able to handle it and that is why some people have come and gone and not fully achieved their potential.
‘There is a lot more to being a Kilkenny hurler than walking around the town with a county tracksuit top on your back.
‘Every time you put that jersey on, you step up to that standard and some days you are not going to perform to your optimum, but you give 100 per cent and you go for every ball as if it was your last one.
‘That’s what being a Kilkenny hurler is,’ he gushes, hardly pausing for breath.
And you just know if Cody decided to run an induction course for wannabe Kilkenny hurlers, he would pin those words to the front gate of his boot camp.
He is too rooted to be getting giddy about where this Kilkenny team is heading on the back of a handful of wins in the spring, but believes that irrespective of today’s result, this has been a champion Allianz League campaign for the Cats.
The transition which so many had predicted would be a brutal and prolonged process may prove to be relatively painless.
Mossie Keoghan, Richie Leahy, Conor Delaney and Enda Morrissey nand John Donnelly have made the step-up with such assurance that they all have the feel of mainstays.
‘More than all the teams out there I think we have found the most players capable of playing in the Championship.
‘The future is definitely bright but at the same time I don’t think that we should be getting carried away and they still need time to gel.
‘I don’t think it is fair to start making comparisons with the teams I played in, because every team needs time to grow.
‘People forget that our team took time, too. When you think back to that 2008 final when we are at our peak, but that was three or four years in the making.
‘What I liked looking at Kilkenny last weekend was the way they scored 1-11 without reply, in defiance of a sweeper, while playing in front of a huge Wexford crowd. I think this group is developing its own ruthlessness, but it has to be given the time to do so.’
In contrast, he argues that while Tipperary are blessed with a deep reservoir of talent — Michael Ryan has given game-time to 35 players in reaching today’s final — they could run the risk of making bad decisions because of too much choice.
‘You could probably name 12 or 13 of the Kilkenny team now, but with Tipperary you would be lucky if you hit double digits.
‘Looking at the League, they have tried a lot of guys but other than Alan Flynn and Jason Forde, they have not really got a whole lot.
‘They have not stumbled across their best 15. Is Pádraic Maher going to play centre-back? Is Ronan Maher going to be wing-back or centreback? Where is Cathal Barrett going to play?
‘When Séamus Callanan comes back and goes in full-forward, where does Jason Forde go?
‘There are a lot of questions hanging over this Tipperary team and it is a huge dilemma for Michael Ryan at the moment to find his best 15.
‘If they get that right, I would probably tip them right now to win the All-Ireland.’
In the short time he has gone the game has changed and not just in terms of a revamped Championship format, but in style, too.
With increased emphasis on defensive systems, goals have dried up,
and with players now able to hit the ball longer and more accurately from outside defensive zones, point-scoring has gone through the roof.
It has also led to suggestions that the physicality has been diluted within the game, but Tyrrell believes the truth is evidenced in a constituency that will never be satisfied.
‘What do we go to see games for? We go to see unbelievable skill, we go to see scores, we go to see blocks and we saw all that last weekend. Are we ever going to be happy?
‘Have we now reached the stage where we are trying to cut down the number of scores?
‘I was up at the colleges final at
the weekend, the display of skill that Adrian Mullen put on for St Kieran’s [against Athenry’s Presentation College] had to be seen and then there was Ronan Maher’s sideline [in last weekend’s Allianz League semi-final]… I would have walked to Thurles just to see that.
‘That is what we come to see and yet you have some people complaining that the game is in trouble when it has never been in a better place.’ And with that he is off. ‘I will spend half an hour now trying to keep up with some young lad who is going to run the legs off me.
‘But, sure, what else would you be at?’ he asked with a grin.