AT THE RECENT launch of Kilkenny’s 2026 hurling season, an annual staple of sponsors Tirlán, we asked Martin Keoghan how close they are to a settled team.

The suggestion on some or other podcast on the drive to Kilkenny, that Donegal’s real superpower in the football world is their sheer predictability, by way of round pegs for round holes, right across their team, got us thinking.

Kilkenny seem to be a long way from that, right? Keoghan appeared taken aback at first, like it was the daftest question he could possibly have been asked in February.

“I don’t think we’re particularly close to a settled team at all,” he eventually responded, “but I think that’s a good thing. It shows that there’s competition there.”

That’s for sure. With 29 different players used so far in just three National League games, Derek Lyng clearly isn’t short on options. Add in the players who featured in their three-game Walsh Cup/Walsh Shield campaign and that figure rises to 37.

An alternative take is that Lyng is searching for something he mightn’t ever find. Liam Sheedy said something along those lines about Kilkenny on League Sunday after watching them narrowly beat Waterford last Sunday.

“I don’t see the real quality of forwards coming through, when you think about the quality of forwards in the game, I don’t see Kilkenny having enough,” said Sheedy, not so much speaking about this Sunday’s Division 1A clash with Cork but in broader All-Ireland terms.

The man who guided Tipperary to two All-Ireland final wins at Kilkenny’s expense obviously wasn’t won over by a forward six against Waterford that contained Timmy Clifford, Stephen Donnelly and Liam Moore, all of whom were taken off.

Then again, you couldn’t really say with any great certainty that Kilkenny have things particularly nailed down in any line of the field.

It’s hard to imagine Eoin Murphy won’t start in goals again come the Championship but Aidan Tallis has started four of their six games so far this year. Mikey Carey seems to be the new full back but there’s any amount of WhatsApp rumours doing the rounds that Huw Lawlor will be back for the business end of the season, to relieve him of the No 3 jersey.

Huw Lawlor in action against John McGrath last year. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

Darragh Corcoran is a fresh appointment at No 6. So is David Blanchfield ahead of him at midfield. It looked like Killian Doyle was being lined up as a midfielder but he then played wing back against Waterford. Eoin Cody is nominally their centre-forward now and was excellent against Limerick in Round 3 of the League but Waterford, forewarned, stuck a man-marker on him, Paddy Leavey, and kept him relatively quiet. Maybe the Shamrocks man would be better off closer to goal after all?

Beyond that, in attack, we’re getting into the area where, according to Sheedy at least, Kilkenny are lacking in depth and quality. This is where Cian Kenny, maybe their best midfielder, has ended up playing. He’s taking the frees too but, notwithstanding his winning point against Waterford, has had a few shaky attempts, as has Eoin Cody. That’s a whole pile of uncertainty, particularly up the centre of their team, seven weeks out from a Leinster SHC opener with Galway.

Throw in the fact that when you watch Kilkenny these days, they aren’t exactly working off the traditional playbook of early deliveries into a Martin Comerford-esque figure up front capable of winning his own ball, and you’ve got a group searching for not just new players but perhaps a fresh identity.

One of Keoghan’s points against Waterford came after a move that contained seven passes and which originated in the Cats’ own full-back line. Sometimes, they only had a single man in their inside line. We can only presume that Lyng is chasing some sort of hybrid of what worked best for him when playing for Brian Cody in the glory years, and what he’s seen with his own eyes as a coach and manager in the more recent times dominated by short-passing Limerick. A penny for Cody’s thoughts on it all. The TV camera picked him out in the stand last weekend, as it happens.

You know what he’d probably say? That maybe the current Kilkenny crew won’t have enough to beat Cork back at Nowlan Park this weekend but that when it comes to their readiness for the Championship, they’ll be just fine.

That with six Leinster titles annexed in the last six years, they’re just one more successful provincial campaign away from matching the seven-in-a-row record Cody himself set with Kilkenny between 2005 and 2011.

That they were All-Ireland finalists as recently as 2022 and 2023 and that it’s taken the eventual MacCarthy Cup winners to beat Kilkenny in each of the last four seasons.

That we still haven’t seen TJ Reid nor Adrian Mullen in 2026 and that, when they do return, Kilkenny will have five of the six starting forwards that lined out in both the 2024 and 2025 semi-finals, two games they could easily have won. Billy Ryan is the absentee.

That they were six up on Clare in the third quarter of the 2024 semi-final and that, against Tipp last year, an errant scoreboard was the opposition’s 16th man in the frantic, closing minutes of another barnburner.

Put simply, Kilkenny always find a way. Even Sheedy kept circling back to that inescapable truth about the county while he was seemingly writing them off from doing anything special this season.

“I could not see them having enough to make a consistent push,” said Sheedy before adding the crucial rider, “though the likelihood is they’ll be in an All-Ireland semi-final again.”