FOR an insight into the potential pitfalls that await Brian Cody’s successor, a passage from Eoin Larkin’s 2019 autobiography is instructive.
After beating Galway in the 2013 League semi-final, it emerged that Cody would have to undergo a heart procedure that would require him to stand aside from the manager’s position for a number of weeks.
In his absence, Kilkenny scored a stirring victory over Tipperary in the League final at Nowlan Park, a game they were never likely to have a problem rousing themselves for, but, after that, they began to lose traction. And while they had injuries to key players, there was more to it, as Larkin noted.
READ MORE: Next Kilkenny manager: The candidates to replace Brian Cody as Cats boss
“As we regrouped for the championship, things weren’t quite the same without Brian around and it’s only really on reflection that I realised it,” he wrote. “Just by being there, he’s able to drag that extra five or 10 percent out of you.
“He doesn’t have to say anything, his presence alone is enough. So his absence was huge. We were going for three-in-a-row again and there was nobody better than Brian at banishing that softness that can creep in when you’ve enjoyed success.
“If he saw standards slipping in training, even slightly, he’d call us all in and fire out a few stern words. Everyone knew then.
“Mick Dempsey wouldn’t exactly take prisoners in training either to be fair and he would have a bit of a fear factor about him, though Martin Fogarty was more the good cop. Neither of them could wield the same influence as Brian had over us though. By the time he came back, we were chasing our tails.”
They failed to reach the Leinster final and, for the first time in 17 years, didn't get as far as the All-Ireland semi-final. Cody only stepped away for a few weeks and yet standards dipped enough for Kilkenny to suffer their worst Championship campaign in a generation or two.
As Larkin observed, Kilkenny’s key men were “just past their best at that stage”, and so revitalising them to squeeze out two more All-Irelands in 2014 and ‘15 was his greatest achievement.
There was a similar vibe to the run to this year’s All-Ireland final. A Kilkenny team that was unremarkable by comparison to Cody’s four-in-a-row side, for example, almost toppled a Limerick team that is, for now at least, second only to that 2006-09 vintage in the pantheon of great teams that we’ve seen over the past 50 years or so.
While Cody had his tactical limitations, which were apparent again in the puckout strategy employed against Limerick, his ability to continually extract a baseline level of performance that allowed his team to be highly competitive, at the very least, against the very best of opposition was an extraordinary feat of management that the next man up will struggle to match.
Men of Dempsey’s and Fogarty’s experience couldn’t manage it for even a few weeks in 2013.
Having turned 68 last week, the end of his reign was becoming increasingly inevitable and though it wasn’t a winning ending, it was certainly Kilkenny’s best effort since their last All-Ireland seven years ago and markedly better than the heavy defeats to Tipperary in the 2016 and ‘19 finals, when the manager’s oldfangled approach in some respects contributed to their demise.
Outside of that, at times he lacked class on the sideline (an exchange with Anthony Cunningham in 2012 springs to mind), while the graceless exchanges with Henry Shefflin this summer were absolutely unnecessary and underscored the perception that, even for his greatest servant, players were essentially commodities to stockpile silverware.
As Limerick have succeeded Kilkenny as hurling’s dominant force, so John Kiely has supplanted Cody as the game’s pre-eminent manager now.
There’s much that binds the pair; both school principals that have driven their respective counties to unprecedented heights, but Cody’s longevity and level of success will scarcely be rivalled going forward by Kiely or anybody else.
“Most definitely not,” Kiely, who has completed six years at the Limerick helm, exclaimed at the prospect of making significant inroads on Cody’s 24 seasons ahead of the recent All-Ireland final. “Most definitely not!
“I don’t know how he’s done it. An incredible achievement, what he’s done – a massive, massive achievement.
“He’s had a whole raft of different groups of players under him, management teams, coaches, backroom staff, and he still goes on.
“He’s the standard-bearer in our game in that regard, and I don’t think anybody will ever surpass it.”
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