Kilkenny GAA Thread

I'm not for one moment saying we're good enough to win the All Ireland this year but Kilkenny didn't appear that inferior to Limerick in the Final last year. Also, we beat Limerick in the under 20 Final. I wouldn't be judging our players on watching back today's game.

Yeah a lot of that is bang on. Fair play to Derek for unearthing the few new players

Will Billy Drennan or TJ be on the frees for championship as I think Billy has done enough to keep his place on the team.

He is playing very well.

DeBurca had one in each ear.

What we saw yesterday was an abomination. Straight out of the Davey and Derek (McGrath) handbook on how to destroy hurling. While I accept it was all magnified by the conditions, we need some rule changes. We can start by banning short puck outs. Make them go beyond your own 40 at least and preferably the 70. It is also time to ban the hand to hand pass which is a throw now anyway. That would open things up a bit, lessen the carrying of possession into contact and negate sweepers to a degree at least.

Enforcing the current rules would be a start.

The most important thing at the end of the league for all those young lads is that they go back to the U20s as leaders and try to win that all ireland. Billy Drennan, Gearoid Dunne, Aidan Tallis, Niall Rowe and Timmy Clifford should all now show the benefit of senior experience. I think Derek has been clever here. There will be time enough to bring them into the senior championship team when the U20 is over.

They weren't cotton wool, definitely ear pieces. Probably some kind of "Davey shenanigans" bluetooth instructions 😂 what did he get the yellow card for??

What ever he got the yellow card for the ref lost the plot with us after that the incident with John Donnelly was unreal clearly taken out of it gives a scorable free to Waterford.

Cork game confirmed sunday at 4.waterford were very negative and cork should be a better match,more traditional and I'd expect a better performance. Lawlor,butler and Richie Reid will strengthen up things at the back and Adrian is back hurling this week hopefully he will be a sub. Cork also have a good few injuries and like ourselves anyone with any doubts won't be risked. It would be great to get the win and a Crack off limerick in a league final.

Davey called Liam Gordon a fffing bolx and the linesman rightly called him in and gave him a yellow. I know conditions were dire but I thought he was poor. Waterford Definitely jumped into a few tackles and got a few frees. It was lucky they drove a load of wides.

I said it last week Cian Kenny and blanchfield are our biggest culprits going into a tackle with their arms in the air.Ceathrach Daly was the biggest Culprit yesterday and Dan Mccormick is also a great man for it. Refs will rightly clamp down on this and the player will be blown for steps. Locally I seen blanchfield blown for the bridge last year.Regarding the throwing we're nearly guilty as any team now I don't know how this can be properly policed with the game as fast as it is and like the last few years it will be blown for the league and early championship and be forgotten about when it gets to the business end.The sunday game will highlight a few incorrect decisions and refs will ignore it.

Very hard take many positives from yesterday other than the win. We could of lost it very easily.i know Delaney is very rusty but I think his better suited to the half back line. He was caught in no man's land for waterfords only goal chance that barron should of scored. I'm suprised lyng left Deegan as a sweeper. I know waterford pushed up on padriag and wanted Deegan as sweeper. It nearly worked he gave away two cheap scores on a day it was hard to get scores. Deegan wasn't alone in this cause Delaney and Tommy gave away some terrible ball. I just couldn't believe what I was watching de burca sitting In the pocket as he has for 10 years and going left and right and we ballooning missiles down on him. At least padraig was trying to play a few balls to the side.

I wouldn't be getting carried away one way or another its still very early and we definitely won't have things perfect at this stage but surely to God they knew burca was going to be a sweeper and our plan was feed him balls or else hope to win something off the break if it hits the ground. The ball our backs are giving or forwards is as much a defenders ball as it is forward. I'm hoping over the next few weeks that puckouts,deliveries and movement will be our priority.

Drennan deserves credit for the way he has went. He's an excellent free taker and hopefully will be for the next 10 years. Although not the quickest he has a good hurling brain and isn't greedy. As someone else said himself,Clifford and dunnes job now is to go back to the u20s and drive that thing on. We could be gone out of that early. Dunne does look good for a 19 year old but he gave away a few frees that were needless. He'll obviously learn and this is great experience for these lads.

Glad I didn’t travel into that game weather made it poor but also the way Waterford set up made it an even poorer spectacle.

Kilkenny I don’t feel know what the gameplan is or are in two minds between long and short. This was shown as Delaney went short and you could hear Lyng telling him to get it in long.

Most teams are trying to copy Limerick but if you study Limerick they short pass it as far as half back/midfield then bang it in low to the corner or high if they see Gillane behind his defender, as he is excellent at playing the hurl.

Kk and Waterford aren’t doing this they are running the ball for the sake of it and then hitting aimless ball as Deegan did multiple times.

Aimless passing and running isnt needed maybe two short passes then a good pass into the corner. Drennan got one great ball and nearly made a goal out of it.

Kk issues: Pace! Deegan got turned badly same with Delaney.

Midfield really poor.

Why hasn’t Lyng tested out players in the league such as Niall Brennan Daire O Neill Des Dunne etc.. They aren’t going to get a game really now whereas we have seen Murphy Fogarty etc we know all about them.

Postives Tj Mullan to come back. Still won and Waterford make games like that anyway.

If we dont have butler or Lawlor i think we will be exposed at the back against Cork.

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Eoin Cody is a doubt also. Kilkenny should beat Cork in this weather. The slow ground will take the sting out of Cork and make it much more physical. Cork will be at there best in the summer. Lads like Fogarty and Deegan will thrive in these conditions.

So much like the Tipp match, I think theres an awful lot being over read into that game and look it's the only evidence we have, so you have to try take something from it. However I think if you look at our league last year (different manager I know but the same S&C man) we're in a similar stage of development and we powered into the rest of the year. From what I've heard we've done very little hurling to date and they were still in some heavy blocks of training up until recent weeks. We have huge improvements to make from last Sunday but I think they can be made very easily. I think in finer conditions we would have been much further ahead in the first half. Ball that usually comes up easy or sticks in the hand were falling off or being dropped all over the place. I think with more hurling our touch will come on leaps and bounds.

I think our young team (and management) were baffled by how Waterford were playing but I think a lot of the Waterford players were also confused by it. Davy came up with his negative style of play and it worked to make it a shite game. I do think however in better conditions we would have been well up at half time. We were first to most balls into the forwards but these just weren't sticking or rising giving the defender plenty of chances. a lot of our movement went as well with Davy's tactics we got a bit caught up in it and delivered silly ball from deep instead of taking it up to our own 65 or midfield before delivering fast ball to the forwards on the move. De Burca ate up Deegans long ball all day but given Davy's tactics and the conditions I don't blame them for going long so much but we needed to be quicker under that dropping ball with numbers.

I think Butler and Lawlor have been training recently and it was decided not to try them. Murph had to follow concussion protocol after the Dublin game. Adrian is running again and has started a bit of hurling. I think TJ is doing a bit too, most of the those who didn't start last weekend just had niggles that there was no point in risking them in those conditions for a league game.

Billy Drennan gave a display of free taking the likes of which I don't think I've ever seen from such a young freetaker especially in those conditions. He has one of the sweetest strikes of a ball and stroke that I've ever seen. I think he will be very good if not this year in the next few years. My only reservation about him is his lack of work when the forwards loose the ball. He's very slow to track and doesn't seem to be arsed. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here saying that he doesn't have the conditioning yet to track lads like that and perform when the ball comes in so is saving himself. It's something he will need to improve on.

I think Cian Kenny has a long way to go to get back into the team, granted his last two games were at wing back but he hasn't looked good at all this year.

I think Gearoid Dunne can possibly do a job for us off the bench this year. The conditions were terrible but he was trying to do the right thing and I think on a better day he would have set up 2 or 3 really good chances but the wet just made them go astray.