DIFFERENT FINALS STAND out for different reasons. 2006, being my first All-Ireland, is obviously very special.
That day we essentially formed a new template for how we were going to play, some of it unwittingly.
We had a very clear structure of what we were going to do – stick to our own men rigidly to ensure that Cork couldn’t get their short-passing and running game going. Then, it all went out the window: from the first ball that Seán Óg Ó hAilpín got, we pounced on him.
Vincent Hogan, writing in the following day’s Irish Independent, said that Ó hAilpín was ‘promptly set upon like a man who runs out of petrol at the wrong end of town. He was surrounded before the engine began to splutter’. And that set the agenda for the day: we hunted them down relentlessly.
Over the course of my Kilkenny career, we didn’t tend to pay much heed to the opposition. I’d say in percentage terms it was usually about 95-5 in terms of us and them. Brian always instilled in us that if we were right, it didn’t matter what the opposition did. But the 2006 final was different. I’d say the balance was tilted to around 70-30. Cork were going for three-in-a-row having introduced a somewhat radical style of play and we broke their game down to a fair degree in the run-up to the game. We decided to drop deep for their puckout.
The full-forward line would effectively regress to where the half-forward line would typically be and the half-forwards would take station at midfield, and so on. We didn’t mind if the Cork goalkeeper, Donal Óg Cusack, hit it to a corner-back as we didn’t feel that he was going to get significantly greater distance on it than he would.
It worked so well that we adopted that tactic for all opposition thereafter. We won by a goal in the end but it was as comfortable a three-point victory as you’re likely to see. I had been substituted by the time the final whistle sounded but sprinted back on to join in the celebrations. I even jumped up on Brian Cody’s back.
Virtually anything goes in the 10-minute exemption period after an All-Ireland final. We’ve all seen Brian do his little jigs at the final whistle but he was always back to being the real Brian Cody by the time we returned to the dressing room after All-Ireland finals. In the warm-up area he might address us and say something like, ‘Well done, we did what we set out to do. Now go and enjoy your night.’
Ned Quinn would sing ‘The Rose of Mooncoin’ and we’d form a huddle; Cody would participate without giving it his all. It just wasn’t him. It was a much-asked question after our various All-Ireland wins: how does this one compare? Many of the players said after the 2006 final that it was the most special and that still holds true for a lot of lads.
If you look at 2006, it was a new Kilkenny team. A few of us, like Cha Fitzpatrick, Jackie Tyrrell and myself had been around for a year or two without making a real imprint. John Tennyson was a new centre-back. We stepped up as a team that day, beating a very seasoned Cork side with reasonable comfort, and maintained an incredibly high standard for years afterwards.
2011 would command a similar place in our affections. Tipperary were hailed as the coming force in the game after beating us in 2010. Although we had beaten them in 2009, we rode our luck before they turned us over the following year.
Another defeat to them in 2011 would almost have been a de facto three-in-a-row for them and would have tarnished everything we’d done. That’s the way we looked at it anyway. They’d shown some good form that year coming into the final and had put seven goals past Waterford. Ours was a more low key passage but we produced our best display in the final and beat them convincingly. That was sweet.
The Waterford game in 2008 was the greatest team performance I was ever involved in, finals or otherwise. I wasn’t aware of just how well we were playing as the game was in progress and that’s probably the key to why it was so good – if we had stopped to admire our work the final masterpiece mightn’t have carried the same flourish. I do remember a moment in the first half when we had established quite a lead and Ken McGrath, who was playing as a deep-lying centre-back, gesturing to Davy Fitzgerald as to whether he could go out and actually mark Henry Shefflin.
Davy waved over with a firm ‘no’ and Ken was utterly demoralised. There was a bit of a bandwagon about Waterford in the run-up to that final and we used that to motivate ourselves. We certainly derailed it.
That culture that I talk about was cultivated in Nowlan Park when we trained.
Sometimes the games boiled over, as you’d expect, and I was at the centre of a particularly bizarre incident in the lead-up to the 2012 All-Ireland final replay against Galway.
Pádraig Walsh was marking me and we got entangled at one stage and, before we knew it, we were wrestling on the ground. My helmet came off and the next thing I felt was a ferocious kick in the face which sent my head flying. It was big brother, Tommy Walsh.
He could have broken my neck. I absolutely lost the plot; just went nuts. I got up off the ground and started swinging my hurl like the grim reaper wielding his scythe as the lads pulled Tommy back. Matthew Ruth might have innocently got a good belt for his troubles. Cody came in and broke it all up but I was on my way. ‘Fuck this, I’m not hanging around for this shit.’ Cody let a roar at me.
I ignored him and kept going. He let another roar. ‘What? Do you want me to stay for this fucking shit?’ ‘Come back here, come back,’ he said. I went back and finished out the last few minutes of training and then went straight in, got my clothes and headed for home without togging in. Anne’s mother had been looking after the kids. My face had a big mark on it. ‘Jesus, what happened to you?’ she wondered. ‘Ah, I got an oul belt in training.’
I got into the shower and was just coming out when the doorbell rang. Tommy.
‘Jesus, Eoin, I don’t know what came over me. I’m really sorry,’ he said.
‘Yeah, grand,’ I said, as I slammed the door in his face.
Anne came home later. ‘What happened your face?’ ‘Ah, I got an oul belt in training.’ But she knew there was more to it than that. Later that night, when I’d calmed down a bit, I took out the phone and sent Tommy a text.
‘Look, you did something wrong but you came up and apologised, we’ll just forget about it now.’
The following day, a phone call from Anne. A now familiar question. ‘What happened to your face?’ ‘I told you last night, I got a belt.’ ‘I know you didn’t. Marlis is after texting me to say that Tommy gave you a boot in the face.’ ‘Sure how does she know?’ ‘Tommy told her.
He feels brutal. She said he was beside himself last night.’
We moved past it fairly quickly. Tommy is one of my very best friends and Marlis, his wife, and Anne are close too. After we won the All-Ireland, we all had a great laugh about it in the pub.
Camouflage by Eoin Larkin is published by Reach Sports and available to buy in all book stores.
