Sober Galway mentors are not into high fives!
Date Published: 11-Jul-2012
IF you didn’t know any better, the demeanour of the respective managements at the press conference in the aftermath of the enthralling Leinster hurling final on Sunday would have given no clue as to which team had won.
Kilkenny’s Brian Cody was first into the media room to analyse the game. Cody was Cody.
He looked and sounded like he always does: baseball cap perched atop his red-face, arms folded, Cody was calm, very matter-of-fact. You could detect no anger; zero emotion. You’d never have thought his side just suffered one of the heaviest hidings of his incredibly successful reign.
“No excuses,” he said, a phrase he repeated time and again. Fair enough, no excuses but had he any explanations, any reasons for losing by 10 points?
“The better team won”, the “winners were very emphatic”, Galway “dominated the game”, and again, “no excuses”, he said. Yeah, but . . . but . . . but . . . but what happened.
Did the overwhelming favourites tag get to them? “There’s no excuse. We don’t deal in excuses. It’s not as if we have the preserve on everything out there. I’ve sat here before having lost games with Kilkenny, that’s the way it is. We don’t make excuses; there’re no excuses. If you’re going to use the excuse that everybody thinks you’re going to win the game, it’s a very, very poor excuse to have because it’s won and lost on the field,” he said.
Maybe the absence of the likes of Michael Fennelly and JJ Delaney didn’t help? “We’ve never ever used being short a few players as a reason for winning or losing. That doesn’t matter, it doesn’t come into it, there’s no excuse. We had 15 players ready to start, we’d 15 players ready to come in, and anybody missing is not a factor at all as far as we’re concerned,” he said.
Were they ill-prepared for the intensity Galway brought, the standard they set? “Intensity is part and parcel of the game. I’ve often sat here and talked about the intensity we bring. It’s very much part of sport and part of hurling and if we weren’t prepared for that intensity we shouldn’t be around the place at all.
“We didn’t play well in the first half. It wasn’t a question that we didn’t have an answer to the intensity – we were dominated but that’s sport. There’re no excuses. It’s not a question of not being prepared. We prepared, we expected, we anticipated an absolute phenomenal challenge from Galway. We got that challenge and they were better than us,” added Cody. Full marks for honesty.
Next it was Galway’s turn. Out came manager Anthony Cunningham, flanked by his trusty lieutenants, Mattie Kenny and Tom Helebert. Sat stony-faced, the trio delivered their assessment, in a measured, level-headed manner. All very professional.
Cunningham had locked the players into conclave for a 20 minutes’ team meeting before they emerged to face the media, so maybe they got their high-fives, champagne popping and whooping out of the way then. But when the management team emerged, not one of them even cracked a smile.
Not a hint of a celebratory tone, which probably bodes well for the remainder of the All-Ireland campaign. Cunningham, Kenny and Helebert had prepared to win, expected to win (possibly not so emphatically) and their utterances afterwards confirmed as much.They said they were thrilled with the win; thrilled with the performance but they were treating this historic triumph as a stepping stone to greater things.
“We’re very happy for what we’ve got today, which is winning the Leinster final for the first time ever and it’s a big step for us and we’re delighted for what happened, the way it happened and for how it happened,” said Helebert.
For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.