GAELIC GAMES/Start of National Hurling League: Showtime for Brian Cody. Interviews proliferate and photographic poses with the silver trophy are much requested, writes Seán Moran.
At the launch of the Allianz National Hurling League at the Berkeley Court hotel in Dublin the Kilkenny manager may have been part of a three-man panel with Limerick and Dublin counterparts, Dave Keane and Marty Morris, but as the man in charge of last year's double winners Cody would have been aware of the different pressures on him.
This season starts on Sunday and for Kilkenny, comfortably the best team of 2002, the challenge of maintaining that status is about to start. It proved beyond them only two years ago, and Cody hasn't forgotten.
"That's the biggest thing I have to sort out for this year. I'm not talking about the players. Team management will have to investigate every aspect of it. Why is it over the last 10 years or so that teams haven't been able to maintain the previous year's form?
"I don't know whether we'll be capable of learning those lessons until the year unfolds but 2001 will be very much in my mind right through the whole season. We've been forewarned. I remember well the Galway game, the All-Ireland semi-final.
"It's probably the game that stays in my memory long after the wins we had because I think if I let that game disappear from my mind then I'm not doing my job."
Theories of how to defend All-Irelands have translated badly into practice and it's 10 years since anyone (Kilkenny) put All-Irelands back to back. The modern game has developed distractions and pitfalls to complicate matters further.
Before Christmas Cody was sufficiently horrified by the Cork players' dispute to say he'd prefer to see Kilkenny beaten by Cork in an All-Ireland final than to see the Cork hurlers on strike.
"I would hate to see anything interfering with the game of hurling. The game is something special to an awful lot of people and I would be hugely passionate about the game," he clarifies.
The rise of the Gaelic Players Association is a phenomenon that, you sense, troubles Cody, who was unhappy with the protests before last year's league final in Thurles. DJ Carey, the county icon, is now president of the GPA. Cody denies any discomfort.
"I think everyone is well capable of working together. Good strides have been made between the various bodies in the GAA. I'm comfortable with the GPA, just as I'm comfortable with anyone working for the good of the association."
Nor does he believe the amateur nature of the GAA is as under threat as recent publicity suggests.
"This keeps popping up in the media that pay-for-play is on the agenda. The GPA keep answering by saying that this is not an issue. Who's bringing up the issue at the end of the day? It can only be a media-contrived issue. I can only take the GPA at face value when they say that it's not an issue.
"I have a huge job in lots of ways as manager of the Kilkenny hurling team. It takes up a lot of my waking hours and quite a few of my sleeping hours as well. If there are issues that come up that affect me in that job I will deal with them.
"Obviously there are issues out there for the GAA I can't solve. I'll be as interested as anyone else in how the whole thing develops but right now my interest is tunnel vision with regard to the job I'm doing for Kilkenny."
Players' image rights has become a hot topic in the past few weeks with increased GPA activity and the Dublin Daily News deal with the county footballers. Cody says that Kilkenny haven't talked about the subject.
"It's an issue out there but we as a group haven't discussed it. The discussion will be between management, players and county board. There's no divide there and there's no problem.
"My main focus is not on image rights. If that comes up for discussion I'll be in on it, naturally - as manager of the team I'll have to be - but at the moment it's not something we've talked about."
Closer to home there have been niggling controversies. Last month Kilkenny were one of three county teams on holiday in the same Cape Town hotel. Rowdy behaviour was reported and vigorously denied by the Dublin and Kerry footballers. Was the media coverage excessive?
"To be honest, we were a long way away and reading the papers was something divorced from my intentions at the time," says Cody. "I saw one or two pieces when I came back and thought it was off-the-wall stuff, to be honest. I don't know what it was about."
Less directly involved with the county team but controversial nonetheless was the news that former county captain Denis Byrne, dropped from last year's panel, was to transfer clubs from Graigue-Ballycallan to Mullinahone in Tipperary. There has been additional speculation that Byrne might also switch counties.
"It's a surprise to think Denis Byrne would be leaving his club but at the end of the day I've been asked this question by a fair few reporters and I don't think it's my place to comment on it. Because no matter how many reports I've seen or comments on it, I've yet to see one from Denis Byrne. Until I see Denis's thinking on it, I don't think it's for me to comment."
