Richie Hogan remains wary of what Galway can bring to final table

The faceless men of Kilkenny, it turns out, are brimming with character. But we always knew this. We just didn’t see the idiosyncrasies until Eddie Brennan became the first of Brian Cody’s modern greats to switch sides into broadcasting.

JJ Delaney and Henry Shefflin followed this summer. Brian Hogan is also on the radio.

But Richie Hogan trumps the lot of them this week. The 26-year-old is the present tense. The current Hurler of the Year spoke enthusiastically to journalists last Friday, to promote Sunday's Leinster final against Galway, until we ran out of questions.

Ger Aylward’s ruthless exploits against Wexford took up plenty of the conversation but his arrival, the latest black and amber assassin, bled into the age-old question of sustainable sporting dominance.

How come an Aylward always arrives just as a Shefflin steps off the carousel? A simple theory is Brazilians embrace football from crib to grave, like Kiwis do rugby or Sherpas are decent at mountaineering, while Kilkenny folk know little better than the small ball.

“JJ Delaney came in and replaced Willie O’Connor when he retired in 2000,” Hogan began to explain. “He was one of the best corner backs of the 90s but JJ just came in, new lad on the block. Nobody really knew his name, and now he leaves with nine All-Ireland medals and someone else has to stand in.

Same thing

“That’s just the way it goes. I know everybody in Kilkenny keeps saying that but they keep saying the same thing because it is true. Lads just fall out and others fall in. Obviously sometimes we won’t be as good as other years but I think we have a team this year that’s really strong.”

Hogan feeds off the behaviour of elite individual sportsmen in golf and handball – games with comparable (wristy) skills to hurling.

“I follow lads who are really dominant. The likes of Tiger Woods, (Rory) McIlroy and a fella – I don’t know if you know him or not – Paul Brady, the Irish handballer who has dominated his sport for 12 years.

“Their dominance is something I would completely understand. I would watch their matches, see the focus that they have, the savage hunger and determination they have to win another one.”

But the GAA remains a breed apart. Kilkenny, the most professional-looking hurlers we’ve ever witnessed, have seemingly tapped into the amateur ethos like no other county.

“Hurling is a little bit different, because it is not professional you can’t go out and say ‘well, today we are going to give a professional performance’ because if you do you are going to be destroyed. You have to give a performance that comes from the heart, comes from the head as well, but you really have to give it everything or else you are going to be wiped out.”

Hogan’s ruthless nature is betrayed when trying to explain that some nights some players are shattered after work or life outside of hurling.

“But you don’t really have to worry about the lads who are not giving enough. Even lads who have won lots of All-Ireland medals and are just not at the level they should be, they just don’t play. So you don’t have to worry about dragging everyone along because we don’t need everybody. We need 15 or we need 20 or we need a good panel. We probably have 45, 50 lads in Kilkenny who in terms of their skill, their touch and their hurling could play but we are looking for the 30 lads who want to play the most.”

Why can’t other counties replicate that?

“I don’t know. I think it’s pretty obvious that in the last 10 years we have had players as good as any who have picked up a hurley.

No competition

“Maybe Brian Cody’s the key, maybe not. Maybe it was Henry Shefflin and the lads, JJ and Tommy (Walsh) and them but there were lads before them as well, Peter Barry and DJ Carey, who are probably forgotten about now because of other lads replacing them.

“Tradition is a huge thing. There is no competition from other sports in Kilkenny at all. Anyone who is good at hurling will play hurling.”

In the 2012 Leinster final Kilkenny were destroyed in the same manner Galway dispensed of Dublin and Laois learned in recent weeks.

“We were totally blown away . . .Galway just camewith , and they do it every couple of years, an attitude that they would beat all the teams in the country put together on a certain day.

“It was embarrassing to be honest with you.

“I missed the bus home thank God as I had to do one of the drug tests. They weren’t hanging around waiting for me! I was still in here until about 10pm...I was nearly delighted that it did happen as I didn’t want to face the bus journey home.”

His next words lead to sniggering from journalists, in astonishment more than anything else.

“Like, I haven’t been involved in that many teams that have gotten beaten. Maybe four or five in championship. The one in 2010 (All-Ireland final defeat to Tipperary) was the very same. They were not just better than us they were so much better than us. We were completely embarrassed on that day.”

And that is a very rare feeling for a modern Kilkenny hurler.