Somebody Do a Drugs Test Quick

8th Sep 2008

Kilkenny loads
Waterford 1-13

Pressure: check out the neck

Erra come on like. After a clocking up a score like that against Waterford there must be something suspicious in the Kilkenny water bottles. Did anyone check their helmets to see if there was some glucose patch or high performance drugs being drip fed into their brains?

At the receiving end this was by far the lowest Waterford have sunk to since Cork men were dispatched to their county in the late nineties to try to civilise the county's stick wielding road warriors and turn them into coherent hurlers. It looks like biting the Cork hand that fed them success for so long has come back to haunt the 'sometimes warriors'.

Surely in a county made up primarily of pubs, chippers and bookies, some corruptible member of the Waterford squad decided to bend to the temptation of the latter and put his life savings on a Kilkenny win. Or are they really this bad?

The cash is handed over in Dungarvan

Cash for Croker
As fears that they would not achieve the three-in-a-row reached fever pitch in the Marble City perhaps a bribe to throw the game was carried across the Kilkenny-Waterford border in a suitcase late on Thursday night to the Deise's final training session.

Interrupting the run-about by driving straight onto the pitch, the stretch limo would have rolled up quietly and ground to halt in front of new banisteoir, Davy Fitz.

The blacked out window would be lowered only enough to squeeze out a dark brown suitcase loaded with cash. Those outside would have seen little of the man inside bar his black and amber baseball cap - the purring of the feline cats on his lap the only sound.

Davy Fitz would have opened a little crack the case to witness the contents before closing it again and nodding to the blacked out window. Deal. The window ascends and Cody pulls off with a smile as wide as twenty-three points, calmly stroking the head of his favourite kitten, Henry.

All Guns Blazing
As we watched the Deise unravel in suspiciously easy circumstances machine gun fire seemed like the only way Waterford would get on the scoreboard and might yet be the only way to prevent Kilkenny's four or five-in-row.

Cody gives the half time talk

Saying that, if a sharp shooter picked off some of Waterford's "finest" hurlers the Deise might have actually been better off so astonishingly feeble was their effort. Apparently Waterford's camogie players aren't too hot but surely they would have put up a better fight than the pathetic flapping we had to endure on our screens.

Congratulations Kilkenny
Seriously though, we put our hands up and give congratulations to Kilkenny. They're a great hurling county. Admittedly hurling is the only thing they've got but nobody in Cork would deny that their performances against Cork and Waterford were both hugely impressive so we're not afraid to give credit where it is due.

They have mastered the skills of, albeit just one Gaelic game, but they have done this proficiently and with humility. You'd kind of half-wish they were a bunch of stuck-up arrogant langers and not the reasonable soft spoken gentlemen that they, at least on telly, appear to be.

Title Recount
Before Kilkenny's bandwagon gets up to full speed and the county completely loses the run of itself we'd like to add a few footnotes to the Cats' celebrations.

Weird.

While on the surface the number of All Ireland titles may be appear to be in Kilkenny's favour, in arriving at this result one has to ignore neglect that county's lack of commitment to the entire spectrum of Gaelic games.

Kilkenny now have more All Ireland hurling titles than Cork (by just one) but if we were to take a proper unbiased look at the role of honour it would be disrespectful to the majority of Irish Gaelic games exponents by excluding the most popular game: football.

While Kilkenny are now ahead by the narrowest possible margin Cork is still ahead in the total number of All Ireland titles.

However, that is not to deny that hurling is important to Cork people and disillusioned Rebels scratching their heads in frustration watching dumbfounded TV panellists should remember this:

Sunday Game analyst Cyril Farrell said after Cork's rout of Galway in the 2005 All Ireland final that he had "no idea how anyone could stop Cork". Kilkenny didn't even reach the final that year and the previous year Cork had beaten them out the gate of Croke Park by eight points. Cyril used the exact same words again on Sunday night.

Fear not dear Rebels, Kilkenny will be beaten at some stage - we just have to make sure we are there to step over their corpse when their time of weakness comes.

Tune in next week when we reveal the PROC "master plan" to beat Kilkenny in 2009.