Kilkenny captain Richie Reid says that he and his teammates are nonplussed by the circus surrounding Brian Cody and Henry Shefflin.
Reid won two All-Ireland club titles under Shefflin’s stewardship with Ballyhale Shamrocks, while he has been promoted to a more prominent role in the county team in recent times by Cody, leaving him uniquely placed to comment on the debacle with the pair having shared frosty handshakes in recent Kilkenny-Galway encounters.
“Two men that want to win, really,” said Reid. “As managers, they're obviously expected to win and it was always going to be controversial if there was anything on the line, it was always going to be blown up. They're two men to be respected.”
Unsurprisingly, Reid feels that the handshake issue, which formed a lot of discussion before and after last Saturday’s Leinster final, has been “blown up a bit too much”.
“Going into the Leinster final, everyone was talking about what was going to happen between Brian and Henry. But as players we can't focus on that, we have to focus on our own game.”
A chance meeting with Shefflin last week might have diverted that focus but Reid’s head wasn’t turned.
“Funnily enough, I actually met Henry on the Wednesday before the game,” he explained. “We were in our homeplace cutting silage.
“I was going out the road and he was walking the dog so we just had a casual talk and nothing about the game or anything.
“In the game, there was nothing either but straight away after the game he was over for the handshake.”
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