"Why wouldn't Brian stay on?" asks Fennelly

October 09, 2014

Kilkenny's Michael Fennelly. INPHO

Michael Fennelly is expecting a text message any day now from Brian Cody to start preparing for Kilkenny's All-Ireland defence in 2015.

Cody won his 10th All-Ireland title in his capacity as Kilkenny manager less than a fortnight ago and Fennelly doesn't see him vacating the role in the near future.

"Hopefully this year we won't get one until January!" the Ballyhale Shamrocks man joked at the launch of Cooking with Chia for Dummies yesterday.

"You'd be half dreading it, thinking about the year ahead, but we're just going to go back to our clubs now and that's where the focus is right now. That's the most important thing."

Fennelly says there's a real danger the Kilkenny team would break up if Cody called it a day.

"The whole structure, the whole thing can really get rattled when things change. It just depends on the players and who's there, but it can just go down completely.

"If you're winning and you love it and you have the time, then why not stay on? Normally you have two or three years of winning titles and there is a massive turnover in management in these times."

The midfielder-cum-half forward says a willingness to move with the times and change tactics was central to the Cats' success this year.

"It was a bigger challenge again (this year) because the sense out there was that hurling had changed. That it had gotten faster and younger and that Kilkenny weren't maybe up to that standard anymore," he continued.

"To be fair to Clare, they did bring it to a new level. Teams look for different edges and tactics have come into it a lot more over the last couple of years. People are looking at the weaknesses of teams and coming up with special ways of beating different teams.

"It's getting more tactical and more interesting, to be honest. Every game you play is just massive and no-one knows who's going to win. When you're up on a pedestal teams are looking at ways to beat you. You can't just go out and play 15 against 15. You have to rejig it and try something better."


Most Read Stories