39 Steps to Greatness, Part Five: 21 years of the Cody Supremacy in Kilkenny

As abiding as the passage tomb at Brú na Bóinne, the Nore waters that slice through his home place, or the ancient game he recalibrated in his likeness, Brian Cody seems to pre-date history.

The archaeological dig of Henry Shefflin’s career yields treasure and endless high achievement, precious artefacts from an era when hurling was held in a stripy stranglehold.

Together with a black-and-amber special forces team, far too distinguished and decorated to be described as a support cast, they constructed the game’s most formidable dynasty.

Today's chapter in our ‘39 Steps to Greatness’ series focuses on the rush of glory that was/is the Cody Supremacy.

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1: Nowlan Park, governed by the strict blue-collar parameters of Brian Cody’s hurling ideology, is a cold house for samba drums or Copacabana foot tennis. Yet, from the youngest age, like their Brazilian soccer cousins, the stick men of Kilkenny shine with the aura of destiny. The tune is a fixed one, their birthright ambition unaltering.

2: The lineage is as thoroughbred as its equine equivalent across the county bounds at Coolmore’s Ballydoyle palace or, 3,700 miles west, grazing on Kentucky’s bluegrass. Lory Meagher begets Paddy Phelan begets Jim Langton begets Eddie Keher begets DJ Carey begets Henry Shefflin begets Tommy Walsh begets JJ Delaney begets Jackie Tyrrell begets TJ Reid…

3: The Cats’ 33 All-Irelands not only separate them from the rest of the field, it is a more abundant harvest of glory than the combined accumulation mustered by Limerick, Galway, Clare, Wexford, Offaly, Waterford and Dublin.

4: At the epicentre of the empire, a timeless creature of smouldering will, we find the master of the house.

5: “People say going out in a match that ‘we’re prepared to die to win this game’, but that’s a dangerous thing to say. You should never say you’re prepared to die to win. You should always be prepared to kill to win a game. That’s the difference.” – Brian Cody.

6: He lurks beneath a black-and-amber baseball peak – an apple-cheeked, insatiable, pitiless and towering commodore. In his vaulting ambition, relentless high-achieving, razor-wire competitive edge, absence of sentiment and primal need to conquer, a blood brother of Alex Ferguson or AP McCoy or Bill Belichick or Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan.

7: Unlike MJ, there is no talk of a ‘Last Dance’. As constant as the passage tomb at Brú na Bóinne, the Nore waters that slice through his home place, or the ancient game he recalibrated, Cody seems to pre-date and out-live history.

8: In an age of instant gratification, his longevity might be considered a miracle. He is immune to fashion. When he was appointed Kilkenny Caesar (succeeding Kevin Fennelly), the Twin Towers gazed down on Manhattan, Charlie McCreevy was Minister for Finance and Dave O’Leary managed Leeds.

9: In his more than 7,850 days as Black and Amber capo, Cody has stared across the All-Ireland Final turf at 12 different managerial opponents. From Pat Fleury to Liam Sheedy, Richie Bennis to John Kiely, Cyril Lyons to Micheal Donoghue, Jimmy Barry Murphy to Donal O’Grady.

10: The Cody Supremacy has endured for more than 21 years. The numbers are dizzying, absurd. Including replays, his teams have contested 18 All-Ireland Finals, winning 11. There was a record-equalling four-in-a-row, five League/Championship doubles, 15 Leinster titles. Throw in Walsh Cups and he has delivered 42 major honours.

11: Addicted to the contest, he recoils at any notion that being in the arena amounts to some kind of grotesque self-sacrifice, comes down hard on showboating punditry.

12: “It’s been said it’s is akin to slavery what’s required now at the top level of sport. That you’ve no life, that you have no career, that you’ve nothing except you’re being slaughtered essentially. I just think that a lot of these people are missing the point completely. “The reason why all of us stay involved in sport is because you enjoy it. It all keeps coming back to the fact you love the game, because you love playing it, because you love the whole thing of being involved with a team.”

13: That was Cody with a butcher’s knife, grate and block, making mincemeat of Joe Brolly’s melodramatic claim that inter-county players were no more than indentured slaves.

14: Here is his hurling philosophy distilled down to his own taste for unadorned meat and two veg: “Look, it’s either in a fella or it’s not. You can’t send out fellas there, that you know in your heart and soul are never going to be able to [take responsibility]. The basic thing is you go out with total honesty, first of all. You can talk about all the other things you like, essentially, they’re in the county panel, first of all because they’re well able to hurl, they’re good hurlers, they have plenty of skill and all the rest of it. And then it’s the application they bring and the honesty they bring and the sense of team they bring.”

15: He is not above the gentle fib, the white lie. The notion that Kilkenny are some primal force who don’t do tactics is nonsense. That the Cody gospel is evolving and adaptable to circumstance was illustrated in last year’s semi-final masterclass, the sophistication with which the Cats decoded Nicky Quaid’s puck-outs, key to ending Limerick’s reign as All-Ireland champions. Likewise after back-to-back losses to Cork in 2004 and 2005, when the half-forwards became surrogate defenders aiding the Kilkenny swarm.

16: Without sentiment or hesitation he culls the herd. Ask Charlie Carter or James ‘Cha’ Fitzpatrick. Even those with an address on Mount Rushmore do not have a ticket for life. In their final summer, Henry Shefflin and Tommy Walsh adjusted to the role of benchwarmer.

17: Of course, this story doesn’t belong solely to Cody. Spielberg or Scorsese could not have achieved transcendence in the director’s chair without dazzling leading men and exceptional role players.

18: Henry Shefflin – AKA ‘King Henry’. The latter blue-blood title one he admits “doesn’t sit easy” with the Ballyhale monarch.

19: The archaeological dig of Shefflin’s career yields treasure and endless high achievement, precious artefacts that explain why hurling was held for so long in a stripy stranglehold.

20: Ten All-Irelands, 11 All-Stars, three-time hurler of the year, scorer of 55-800 in 128 games, an unequalled 28-485 on summer Championship fields. And yet the statistics, however otherworldly, still only whisper around the edges of the story, hint at his dominion.

21: Shefflin was the other half of Cody. The manager’s philosophy made flesh: His genius subservient to his selflessness. A warrior of the highest game intelligence. A hurler enlarged by pressure, one always seeking to squeeze every last blob from the tube. At his very best when greatness was most required. A touchstone in crisis. A shining example, his spine-tingling seizing of that epic 2009 joust with Tipperary.

22: Eamon Dunphy compared Shefflin to Lionel Messi. Brian O’Driscoll nominated him as his favourite sportsman.

23: “I have this thing that, if team-mates are training five times a week, I’ll see to it that I do six. It’s a psychological trick I play on myself, always looking for an edge.” - Henry Shefflin

24: Tommy Walsh, just 5’8”, but soaring so high and majestically to pluck the sliotar from the clouds, that you wonder why there is no airline livery on his fuselage.

25: Jackie and JJ, twin doormen, demanding ID and credentials from even the most famed opponent. And even then, with a cold stare that brooks little argument, frequently refusing entry to Kilkenny’s VIP lounge. Delaney’s hook on Seamie Callanan in the 2014 All-Ireland final, a triumph to live on beyond all our fleeting lifetimes.

26: DJ Carey, a human fizz-bomb, the road runner with a hurl, but so much more than an accelerating blur. Both a lethal predator and the author of moments of gorgeous sorcery.

27: TJ Reid, a hurl in his gloved grip transformed into a wand. Physical enough to dominate the skies, yet with a gossamer touch. At Shefflin’s Himalayan level of consistent excellence. And, like all Cody’s immortals, drawing from a bottomless well of competitive courage.

28: “Back when I was starting, Henry stayed back after training, JJ, Tommy Walsh, pucking a ball. Henry taking frees and shooting points, Tommy out mad to puck. They’d have to be forced to get off the field. That passes down, that attitude in the gym, that attitude off the field. We learned so much from those lads.” – TJ Reid.

29: We haven’t mentioned Richie Hogan, Michael Fennelly or Eoin Larkin. All were Hurlers of the Year. Noel Hickey won nine All-Irelands. Eddie Brennan played in 10 finals. None are found wanting when measured against the gold standard.

30: Like Ferguson, Cody has constantly reseeded. He has deployed 113 players in Championship hurling, building four, maybe five, distinct teams. Always knitted together by the same fundamentals: honesty, integrity of effort, application, grit, an unflinching work rate.

31: On September 8, 2008, they touched perfection. It was blitzkrieg, high art, bloodsport, and, for Waterford, a shutting out of the sun. Scoring a record-breaking 3-30, winning an All-Ireland by 23 points (the biggest wining margin in 65 years), this was Cody Ball: Unforgiving, unrelenting, as thirsty for the jugular in minute 70 as minute one.

32: There was evident enmity in the rivalry with Cork that took the middle of the millennium’s first decade in a stranglehold. Donal Óg Cusack lampooned the Cats as submissive Stepford Wives (Cork players had felt their Kilkenny counterparts had not supported their first strike). Shefflin was rarely as animated as when the Cats blew the Rebels away in the 2008 semi-final.

33: At first Shefflin had not understood the Stepford Wives reference. Later, watching the film – seeing that they were being mocked as unable to think for themselves – he fumed: “Watching, the penny began to drop. I was bulling. I saw what Dónal Óg was implying. We’d no minds of our own. We just followed the leader. We were lapdogs. To me, he was out of order. Dónal Óg knew next to nothing about us as people. He was writing from a position of ignorance. I would have massive personal respect for Dónal Óg as a hurler and as a man. I’ve done a few GPA gigs with him and found him hugely likeable. But the ‘Stepford Wives’ thing made me angry."

34: Cork broken, Tipp emerged as their principal roadblock. Shefflin’s nerveless penalty settled the 2009 final and now Kilkenny were stepping into unchartered territory. 2010 would be shaved to a single narrative: Five in a row.

35: A record-breaking RTÉ hurling final audience of 1,236,000 watched Kilkenny run into the cruel gods and Lar Corbett. Shefflin defied medical science to return to training just 17 days after tearing his cruciate in the All-Ireland semi-final. Yet the miracle soured as he pulled up after just 12 minutes. Corbett’s three goals seized the day.

36: Kilkenny being Kilkenny, recovered to win the next two finals in 2011 and 2012. Critics regard the 2014 final as a sommelier might a 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild: A vintage, full-bodied, final was uncorked, one that yielded 54 scores and by the time Hawk-Eye issued a supreme-court verdict that John ‘Bubbles’ O’Dwyer’s late shot at history had drifted wide, a rating as the greatest game ever played. Kilkenny, again being Kilkenny, won the replay.

37: It is five years since the most recent sovereign black-and-amber summer (sealed with 2015’s four-point victory over Galway), easily the longest down time of the Cody era. One after another the giants have drifted into the shadows. It has been a time of transition, Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, Galway and Tipp all recording Championship wins over the Cats.

38: The freshest memory is also the most pungent. Last year’s All-Ireland final and Tipperary affixing thumbscrews to a Kilkenny team that had lost Richie Hogan to a red card. The 14-point loss an affront to all Cody believes.

39: So we can imagine him smouldering through this suspended summer. Smouldering and plotting and waiting. Hurling’s insatiable Methuselah, eternal as the Nore, and even now, two months from his 66th birthday, itching for one more fight.