Pressure on to end title wait as Kilkenny playing catch-up underage

Irish Examiner

10 hours ago

After last month's All-Ireland U20 All-Ireland final defeat to Tipperary, a hurling roll of honour of the last 10 seasons landed seemingly in every WhatsApp account in Kilkenny.
It made for bleak reading. There languishing in last position alongside Offaly with one All-Ireland U20 title was Kilkenny. To emphasise the point, in the 10 previous years The Cats had won 11 (eight seniors, two U21s and three minors).
The 10-year wait for the Liam MacCarthy Cup, the county's longest since they cut an identical gap in 1957 (the same famine was ended in '32), is the most glaring statistic but the dearth of success at all levels is conflated. In 30 All-Ireland finals between 2016 and now, Kilkenny have reached 11 and lost 10.
In their flagship team, the flagging record of all their representatives teams rests on Sunday in making a 12th final in that period and neither Eddie Brennan nor Jackie Tyrrell were putting a tooth in it this past week. Brennan insisted Kilkenny can't countenance losing while Tyrrell remarked: 'There is a pressure there on Kilkenny in terms of losing the minor and the 20s. The last two All-irelands we've played against Tipp, they've beat us.'
Some of Tyrrell's illustrious contemporaries also know the score. 'You wouldn't have thought we'd go this long (without a senior All-Ireland), but there has been a few signs in a way because we haven't won a minor All-Ireland since 2014, we've only won one U20 since 2008,' says Richie Power, who won the last of his eight All-Ireland senior medals in 2015. 'That (2022) was the year that Cathal O'Neill couldn't play both grades and we obviously beat Limerick by a point in that final.
"But that's probably the worrying stat from a Kilkenny perspective. Obviously, we had a great opportunity to win a minor last year, didn't take it, and then this year with the 20s, And then you come up against a Tipp team that had been so battle-hardened through a Munster championship, which really stood to them.'
The nadir for Kilkenny hurling was supposed to be the U21s' Leinster quarter-final defeat to Westmeath. That result prompted a de facto investigation. As it transpired, it was symptomatic of something more endemic. The sun was shining and the roof remained unfixed.
'Being honest, I think we probably took our eye off the ball a little bit under-age structurally when we were being very successful winning All-Irelands,' suggests Power. 'When you look at it, I think 2010 was when Limerick put their underage structure in place, they started to get the ball rolling there and all of a sudden they're seeing the fruits of that.
"I definitely remember when I was under-age with Kilkenny that the squads that we had were very competitive. You had a north v south and any time we played against each other there was a real bite there. So it's somewhere that we need to get back to, just the grassroots, we need to get back into the primary schools, it needs to be led from there. Everyone talks about Kieran's College being the nursery. Okay, it is, but you can't take your eye off the other schools as well.'
Power bemoans the lack of progression from the U20 success under Derek Lyng three years ago. None of those players will start against Tipperary. Adrian Tallis, Pádraic Moylan, Killian Doyle and Billy Drennan are among the substitutes. 'You look at Tipperary, Oisín O'Donoghue, Darragh McCarthy and Sam O'Farrell and I definitely think young [Paddy] McCormack and Conor Martin will be pushing for a place on the senior team next year. So that's the gap that's there at the moment.'
But there is hope. Two years ago, Michael Fennelly took on the part-time role of performance lead in the county, charged with forging a high performance culture at under-age level. Power knows his old team-mate will need time but Tommy Walsh, who is involved at U14 level, is buoyed by what he's already seeing and felt some of it manifested in the minors claiming back-to-back Leinster titles.
'That (emergence of players) was definitely a worry probably three or four years but Michael Fennelly and his team have come in and they're doing unbelievable work in the academy,' says the Kilkenny great. 'I'd see it at a local level, like players going in every Saturday. It's balancing time with their clubs and time in there, getting the professional and up-to-date training and methods that is needed.
'There's brilliant lads coming at U16 so I'd be definitely hopeful that we are now back producing players and doing what needs to be done to produce them to the level that's required because I often find perception is everything too. And the fact that if people believe that you're putting in the work, some players believe they're going to be better and they'll train harder, practice more at home.'