\u201cJesus, I was mortified looking at us hitting the ball away,\u201d says Fennelly. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t even look where we were hitting it, just drive it down the field. Tipp tried to hurl it better than us, deliver it better. We still beat them, but our hurling was raw, it was as raw as anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t matter. For most of the Cody years, Kilkenny won as they pleased. Agents of change entered the game in that time, but Kilkenny were propelled by age-old certainties. They saw the game as art and labour; not science. As long as they were winning, they could think what they liked. <\/p>\n
It is 11 years now since Kilkenny\u2019s last All-Ireland, the longest hiatus between titles in their glorious history, and that has forced them into hard reflection. Bit by bit, everything they believed about themselves came under scrutiny until it turned into a matter of identity. It was a straight conflict between the two elements that defined them: winning and playing the way they have always played. Those elements were no longer in harmony.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of having our own identity now we\u2019re chasing the pack,\u201d says Adrian Ronan, the former Kilkenny player, who has been involved with county development squads for many years. \u201cThey used to chase us, now we\u2019re chasing them \u2013 their style, their identity. That\u2019s a bit of a change for Kilkenny.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Adrian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/7H2KAPA46NFUTN2RKLS6QDHR3U.jpg\")
Adrian Ronan on Kilkenny hurling: ‘We are trying to change, but we\u2019re reluctant to change.’ Photograph: Ryan Byrne\/Inpho <\/p>\n
The Kildare match last weekend was a thumbnail sketch of their dilemma. In the first half, Kilkenny\u2019s build-up was practised and slow and by half-time Kildare trailed by just a point. Nicky Brennan, who has served Kilkenny in every role from player to manager to county chair, covered the game for local radio.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a lot of lateral passing in the first half, getting nowhere,\u201d Brennan says. \u201cThe [Kilkenny] crowd got animated because they just want to see deliveries going in. At the moment, I think we\u2019re in two minds [about how to play]. We just need to go back to making it a simpler game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kilkenny had a man sent off just before half-time and in the second half they were more direct. Kildare couldn\u2019t cope. What Kilkenny did in the first half was counter to their culture, but it conformed to the trends of the modern game. What Kilkenny did in the second half honoured the local vision of how the game should be played, but, against the elite teams, that is a blunt instrument now. <\/p>\n
For most of the Cody years Kilkenny didn\u2019t compromise on any of that stuff, but that is where they find themselves now: trapped between the harassed certainties of the past and the insistent metrics of the new order.<\/p>\n
Ronan is involved this year with the Kilkenny under-16s and last weekend they played Cork in a challenge match. In the second half Cork played a sweeper and they could tell that the Kilkenny players were discommoded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the club scene in Kilkenny the only sweeper you\u2019ll see is the lad cleaning the dressingroom,\u201d says Ronan. \u201cYou will not see a sweeper in Kilkenny club hurling. We play man on man. Playing the ball through the lines and through the hands, we consider that to be basketball or rugby and we\u2019re not good at basketball or rugby. We play hurling and that\u2019s all we play.<\/p>\n
![\"Kilkenny's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/HGND7OCU25FWLFX2XLLU7DVFE4.jpg\")
Kilkenny’s TJ Reid aiming to demonstrate a piece of timeless hurling skill against Kildare earlier this month. Photograph: James Lawlor\/Inpho <\/p>\n
\u201cNot that we\u2019re arrogant, or that it\u2019s our way or no way. That\u2019s just our way and we\u2019re set in our ways. We are trying to change, but we\u2019re reluctant to change. When you were successful doing it the other way, why would you change? We\u2019re trying to bring in more modern approaches \u2013 we are. But we\u2019re doing it against our will.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the winning was reduced to Leinster titles, everything was questioned. What had happened to their player pathways? Kilkenny haven\u2019t won a minor All-Ireland since 2014 and in the last 17 they have won just one under-21\/20 title. This week their minors lost a brilliant Leinster final but their under-20s were outclassed by Galway \u2013 despite Galway not starting either of their best players. <\/p>\n
Around the turn of the century, Kilkenny were seen as pioneers in this space. \u201cA lot of other counties came to have a look at our template,\u201d says Ronan. \u201cKilkenny people gave seminars on the Kilkenny squad system. What did other counties do? They tore it to shreds and rebuilt it themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Mossy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/HL5GFDFEWFD3TL23ORKFXVYJFE.jpg\")
Mossy Keoghan of Kilkenny competing with Kildare’s Rian Boran earlier this month. Photograph: James Lawlor\/Inpho <\/p>\n
Michael Dempsey was part of Cody\u2019s management team for 15 years and in 2021 he led a review commissioned by the county board. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that there was an air of despondency or gloom in the county,\u201d Dempsey said three years ago, \u201cbut a lot of people in the county definitely felt things could be done better.\u201d<\/p>\n
In player development, they had fallen miles behind. One of the action points from Dempsey\u2019s review was the creation of a job of performance lead. It is a full-time role now, but it was part-time when Fennelly was the first incumbent. Immediately, he chased reform.<\/p>\n
\u201cSt Kieran\u2019s were always competitive and winning [colleges] All-Irelands, but St Kieran\u2019s is probably close to an intercounty team in many ways,\u201d says Fennelly. \u201cSo that camouflaged our slowness to hire more people on the coaching side of it, and our slowness to build facilities. The dominant attitude was: \u2018We\u2019ll be grand.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe academies were revitalised. More resources were added, and more are probably needed. I would have done a survey with current players, former players, current management, former management about what are the values we need to uphold to be a Kilkenny hurler, what are the standards we expect from each other. I pulled all that together and basically created a blueprint to build off [in the squads]. What you\u2019re doing is trying to build a culture again.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/LUE27EHII5A2JCVQBZHTM3ZS6U.jpg\")
Michael Fennelly has played an influential role in trying to develop Kilkenny’s hurling culture. Photograph: Lorraine O’Sullivan\/Inpho <\/p>\n
At the height of the Cody empire, nobody sweated about this stuff. Winning took care of a lot of things. But every empire ends. What then?<\/p>\n
In terms of facilities or funding or coaching structures, there was no traceable legacy from those years. \u201cWe are bereft of facilities,\u201d says Brennan. A few years ago, the county board developed two pitches on the site of an abandoned council dump but, according to Ronan, \u201cthey are not fit for purpose\u201d. At the beginning of this year a variety of Kilkenny teams were forced to train on the SETU campuses in Carlow and Waterford. The county board has no centre of excellence or even an AstroTurf pitch.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere we feel asleep for the last 15 years was from a funding perspective,\u201d says Ronan. \u201cWe can\u2019t skirt around the issue of facilities \u2013 it\u2019s in your face. We have to travel to Carlow and Waterford during the winter to train our young lads [in the squads].<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everyone in Kilkenny realises that the underage needs better structures and better facilities. You can\u2019t compete with the Limericks and these guys with one hand tied behind your back, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been doing. Limerick had the structures and, there\u2019s no secret behind it, they also had the funding.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Cian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/7Q3F35ROARFBNKBX426VFIZ4KU.jpg\")
Cian Kenny scoring a goal for Kilkenny against Wexford in April. Photograph: Morgan Treacy\/Inpho <\/p>\n
That issue is being addressed now. For the last three years, a group of former players and others took on a golf classic that used to generate about \u20ac25,000 in annual income. This year\u2019s event took place on Thursday and Friday in Kilkenny Golf Club and it raised roughly \u20ac120,000, the biggest golf classic ever staged in the county. That money has been ring-fenced for the academies.<\/p>\n
A centre of excellence is at the conception phase with plans for as many as eight pitches. A group of local businessmen, led by former European commissioner Phil Hogan, has been tasked with raising between \u20ac10 and \u20ac15 million and an announcement on its progress is expected soon. For far too long this had been left undone.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Kilkenny are fighting for their lives in the championship. Limerick and Kilkenny are the only teams who have qualified from their provinces in every year of the round-robin system, but if Kilkenny lose in Parnell Park on Sunday and Offaly beat Kildare they will be eliminated. For generations, Dublin<\/a> versus Kilkenny has been an easy game to predict. Not this time.<\/p>\n