Kilkenny GAA Thread

Doesn’t look too far off what you’d expect the championship side will be, outside of Deegan likely being centre back and if/when TJ is back.

Good to see the Ballyhale contingent, Richie Hogan, Shane Walsh and Conor Delaney being back in contention. Makes the panel much stronger. A little concerned that we don’t have much cover for the full back line outside of Delaney as Darragh Corcoran and Matt Kenny are out and out half backs. Has Darren Mullen being brought in, does anyone know?

Great competition for the forwards if you can leave Donnelly and Eoin Cody on the bench. Any word on how long Tom Phelan is out?

I wonder if Buckley will be reprising his three quarter forward role (ie between the half and full forward lines) from the Dublin match (and part of the Laois match)? It seems to be giving him a new lease of life. His movement for the puckouts against Dublin was excellent.

There was mitigating circumstances as to why 2021 minors didn’t perform to expectations. Centre back for the 2020 minors (and who would have played there for 2021 minors as well), Paddy Langton, was lost to injury in the Offaly match so they moved Gearoid Dunne from full forward to centre back. The forwards for 2021 minors really missed Dunne’s presence as he’s an explosive type of player who can win his own ball and bring others into it. They were over reliant on Ted Dunne to win the ball.

Well the 2021 minors had Alan Dunphy, Joe Fitzpatrick, Killian Doyle, Ted Dunne, Harry Shine, Ben Whitty and Anthony Ireland Wall on it who played for Kierans vs ASR so it’s not like these players don’t have talent. Getting to an AI schools final, winning Leinster minor, etc demonstrates there’s talent in the group. Winning AI minors aren’t the be all and end of all. For example from the 2008 AI winning team, Eoin Murphy, Conor Fogarty and Wally were the only players to make their mark for the seniors (Richie Doyle probably would have as well if injuries didn’t curtail his career).

Notwithstanding, we could do with Kilkenny u20s having a successful year just to give some confidence to lads coming through. Lyng has two recent minor teams which got to AI finals to work with so there can be no excuses about lack of talent. If they can overcome Offaly in the QFs, they’ll meet Galway once again in the SF (which has happened every year since Galway have entered the Leinster u21/u20 championship in 2018). As Galway have ended our minors AI chances every year since 2018, we could do with getting one over them if we can get by Offaly.

Darren Mullen is still recovering from an injury I'm told. Hopefully Richie Reid does himself justice and keeps Deegan out of the backs. As you said, it's more or less a full panel now. We should get a stern test from Waterford - their team and supporters are rightfully full of confidence.

Hopefully Darren is not too far away from making a full recovery. Him and Richie Leahy have been cursed with injuries.

Interesting to see how Richie Reid goes. His distribution of the ball and positional sense is excellent. Similar worry to what I’d have with Niall Brassil at centre back is whether he’s physical enough for lads running down the middle and what would happen if he has to deal with a good ball winner like Jack Fagan or Aussie Gleeson under the puckout.

Ok, a few points of correction.

Ulster teams have not had entry automatic entry to AI minor semis for over 25 years and for the past 4 years have played in Leinster championship, so a winning Leinster team will either play Galway or the Munster runners up in a semi. Kilkenny minors have won the last 5 times they played Munster teams in an AI minor semi or final.

Of course Cork and Galway are likely to have a wider spread of schools represented at minor, they have dozens of secondary schools in their counties, we have a handful. It's more a demographic issue not a concentration one.

Even allowing for this most Galway minor teams will come from either Athenry, Gort or Loughrea schools. Limerick minor team will be more concentrated than KK/SKC with them absolutely stacked with ASR players.

There were 7 teams in the Leinster A schools this year not 5, and all 7 were good standard who would easily have held their own even against the better Munster teams.

Galway's issue with good minor teams not training on to u20 and senior is as bad as ours and significantly predates our fall off.

Not insulted at all but find it very hard to believe any team would rate a provincial title above an all Ireland..if that is genuinely a feeling it shows a lack of both belief and ambition..but to my eyes flannans , colemans and ardscoil ris have plenty interest in the all Ireland ..

What your saying is the same as saying a Munster Senior Championship is more important than an All Ireland.

Perhaps the issue in recent years is that some Munster schools had very little else to celebrate other than a Munster title as they couldn't manage to win an All Ireland. To be fair to people with that attitude, how could they know any better? Ard Scoil Ris know what it's like to win Munster, to lose and, now, to win All Irelands. I can guess which title they'd choose as their favourite!

Good battle this today against Waterford. Waterford the better team for most of the first half but KK have fought their way back in to it. Few soft wides from Kk ain't helping.

Goal looked a bit soft from goalkeeper's perspective. Would like to see it again.

The Waterford goalie was very poor for Buckleys goal and could of saved the second one aswell with Billy hitting it on his weaker side. Despite all the doom and gloom it's being a good league for us and blanchfield and butler have being big finds. Kenny hasn't newing too bad either. Buckley and wally look like two players rejuvenated and one of eoin codys point was fantastic. Waterford still missing 4 or 5 important starters but this might dampen the talk about them a small bit and might suit them better in the long run. It's hard to know what teams want to do from here with the championship only a few weeks away. We're not to bad we've laois and westmeath first but the likes of cork and Waterford have much stiffer tests and a bad defeat in a final could do more harm than good

Mikey Walsh said gave an interview with off the ball and he said the rumour is we have a home and away agreement with cork and it will be away in Cork next sunday

Good result and performance today. Blanchfield has been hugely impressive so far and Kenny had done a fine job in the midfield. Buckley and Walter Walsh have really come back to form. Eoin Cody scored some fantastic points when he came on. Defence was fairly solid after one or two shaky moments. Style of play is much better so far, very few aimless high passes, running game is certainly in development and looks a lot sharper. Still a number of diagonal passes where it's clear the player playing the pass clearly hasn't looked where he's hit it. But it's certainly an improvement on some of the play we've seen in the last few years.

The two goals the difference between the teams. Wally and Padraig best of the forwards. Evan Cody's first touch and control was excellent. Our midfield was quiet, not sure we have any good options

Mikey Butler surprised me, he hadn't stood out for me when playing for OLG. Huw Lawlor was excellent again, David Blanchfield impressed also.

We won't set the world on fire, hopefully we can be competitive

Good stuff today in general but won't be getting too carried away. I think our biggest issue is our puck out at this point. A few of our defenders don't really know what to do with the ball when they receive it from Murphy and in particular in the last 20 minutes of games Murphy has a serious over reliance on going to Wally which has been the case for a few years now. It's also painfully slow at times.

Agree with the poster above about the diagonal ball being hit without looking as well.

Our inside forwards tend to make the same run a lot as well which ends up with a crowd of players in one corner (they also seem to make the run earlier than necessary as well which means they have to slow down to get the ball and struggle to get separated from their marker as a result).

On the positive side, Lawlor is top notch at full back and Butler was excellent on Hutchinson which was his biggest test to date. I'm a huge Blanchfield fan. Good in the air, superb at getting a flick in on a forward and more to the point has a real understanding of how the short passing game needs to work. Constantly looking to move forward and look for a return pass where a few of our lads tend to go sideways. Cody was excellent when he came on. His touch in front of the Kilkenny subs while holding off the defender was brilliant in comparison to some of our forwards who really struggled to win that initial ball.

Huge test ahead against Cork now.

Big difference and I'm open to correction is that there is no All Ireland schools in rugby, to win a provincial schools is the maximum ambition so that's why its the be all and end all, hurling and football schools obviously differen with all ireland series.