'The fact we're playing Tipperary adds to it' Kilkenny boss on a classic rivalry

Irish Daily Mirror

2 days ago

The Kilkenny-Tipperary rivalry was one that Derek Lyng grew up hearing about rather than really experiencing.
Coming from Urlingford, just a couple of kilometres from the border with Tipp, the neighbours were in the midst of a lengthy struggle to break out of Munster when Lyng was born and, with no back door system at the time, they went 20 years without meeting in the Championship.
That run was broken in 1991, when they paired off in the All-Ireland final and a 13-year-old Lyng watched from the Hogan Stand as Tipp scored a four-point win.
'They would have played in League matches around that time,' recalls the Kilkenny boss. 'I remember there was always a good crowd that would turn up for Kilkenny-Tipperary. They never got to meet in the Championship around those years.
'I really enjoyed going to those games and obviously, 1991 was not the result Kilkenny were looking for but it was still a match I would have looked over and over. I would have idolised a lot of those players that would have played for Kilkenny in '91.
'They went on and won in '92 and '93 but didn't get to play for Tipperary again until 2002 so there was a big gap there.
'I suppose when you're growing up on the border, you have people from Tipperary and Kilkenny mixing, be it in school or even on your club team. It was always a little bit more important but it was good though. Really enjoyable. I think it adds to it.'
That 2002 game that Lyng referenced was an All-Ireland semi-final in what was his breakout season as a Kilkenny player. They scored a four-point win, their first over them in the Championship for 35 years, en route to the title.
'There was a massive build-up. Tipperary were All-Ireland champions at the time as well in '02. We had a new-ish team at the time so it was an exciting time to be part of that team. Playing Tipperary in a packed Croke Park Park. It was a fantastic experience.'
After just three Championship meetings between 1971 and 2009, there were nine from 2009-19, along with four League final clashes in that period.
The 2009 All-Ireland final is, for many, the greatest game ever played, but there were any number of classics in that era, several of them regulation League games in the spring.
At a time when short puckouts, sweepers and all kinds of tactical innovations were taking hold in hurling, Kilkenny-Tipp remained true to the game's man-on-man traditions.
'It was a little bit simpler, maybe it was,' Lyng admits. 'But I think every year something was always added to it and you can see that, even from a puckout situation over the years. Teams were even back then doing a lot of work. That's something you always had to prepare for.
'Maybe it was a little bit more simpler in terms of it was man-on-man, and particularly how Kilkenny and Tipp go about it, that was generally always the way.
'But at the same time, the fundamentals were always there. It's about winning your own ball; it was about using the ball well and being efficient when you have it. That hasn't changed.
'So certainly from a tactical point of view, there's probably a lot more that you need to take into account now than you did 15, 20 years ago.'
With Tipp's inability to break out of Munster in recent years, much like during Lyng's childhood, Sunday's semi-final is their first Championship meeting in six years and Tipperary won the last two, the finals of 2016 and '19 finals, decisively.
Eddie Brennan reckons that, on that basis, Kilkenny owe Tipp one, though Lyng doesn't tally with his former teammate on that.
'No. And I get it. I think when Kilkenny and Tipp meet, there'll be a lot of talk this week in media – and that's fine and it adds to the whole story of it and it builds up the game and everything else.
'But for us, it's the next game. It's about performing and you can't get caught up too much in the emotion of it all. For us, an All-Ireland semi-final is a huge event in itself.
'The fact that we're playing Tipperary adds to it, if anything. Nothing else comes into play.
'This team are after performing really well all year. We know what the challenge is, we have to take it to another level now. That's what's in front of us, so that's where the focus is going.'