Kilkenny half-backs squeeze life out of Tipperary attack in key final battle line

With four minutes left and Tipperary aching for something, for anything, Bonner Maher finally got the ball in his hand heading for goal. If Eamon O'Shea's Tipp team had a coat of arms, Bonner with the ball in his hand heading for goal would be the insignia. White helmet bowed, bodies bouncing off him like dodgems, Tipp forwards scudding in all directions like a pickpocket gang. This is who they are.

Correction. This is who they were. Of the five goals Tipp had scored in the All Ireland series before the replay, three came from precisely this situation. Yet on Saturday, Kilkenny’s resistance to allowing him repeat the dose was absolute.

So much so that this - in the 66th minute, remember, and with Tipp five points behind - was only the fifth time in the whole game that he was able to wrap his fingers around the sliotar. In the stats, it would count as a possession. In real life, you’d have to give it a semantic leg-up for it to qualify because it was over in an eyeblink.

First, Kieran Joyce met him with a tectonic hit that made the ball drop to the floor around the Kilkenny 45. Cue a thicket of legs and feet and sticks - not the first, not the last - and after all the rutting and rifling, it was Cillian Buckley who popped out with the ball. Off his shoulder came Pádraig Walsh and the third member of the Kilkenny half-back line ran on to split the posts from midfield.

No passage of play summed up the game more succinctly. That Joyce, Buckley and Walsh were involved was no accident for they patrolled that half-back line all day with the meanness of hungover prison guards. No surprise either that when the scrum formed after Joyce knocked the ball out of Maher's hand, Paul Murphy and Conor Fogarty were in amongst it.

Kilkenny's first and last job all day was to flock bodies to that line of the pitch, win the war and govern the peace. Murphy and Jackie Tyrrell both had blocks made inside the opening minute, right on the Kilkenny 65. Walsh caught two Tipp puck-outs in a row just past the 10-minute mark, Buckley plucked a sideline cut from the sky. Anything that wasn't caught was crowded out.

“We tried to neutralise the space in there,” said Joyce afterwards. “They’re great at running onto loose ball and they’re able to do dynamite stuff once they get the ball in their hands. Our job was to neutralise that and to try and stop their puck-outs to a certain extent too.

“[Marking Bonner] was my job. He’s had a fantastic year. He’s a big strong lad. I’ve marked him a couple of times and he gives it everything. He’s a great man to run onto ball and he got onto a few of them today. But thankfully we held out.”

Walsh, Joyce, Buckley. Kilkenny played seven matches to win this All Ireland; this constituted their fifth different half-back line. Walsh hadn’t started a game there since the first night of the summer against Offaly in Nowlan Park. Joyce’s only outing of the year came in Tullamore the day they drew with Galway. Brian Cody’s disdain for the notion of a settled team would survive a nuclear attack.

Brian Hogan and Joey Holden started every game from the Galway replay onwards yet Joyce and Walsh were still able to walk out of Croke Park three weeks ago safe in the knowledge that they might snag a spot for the replay. By the time the weekend before the final rolled around, they had earned themselves a move from the B team to the A team. Thus was the empire forged, thus will it be maintained.

“Brian says it after every game, it’s a blank canvas again,” said Joyce. “Everyone has a chance to get in. It’s just a matter of going and training hard on the pitch and taking your chance. Joey and Brian and the lads have been hurling brilliant all year. There was a couple of us itching to get on. Pádraig was the same.

“And that’s the best thing to get that extra 10 per cent out of fellas. The competition was fierce for places. That’s what made it extra special. The training inside, the tempo of it has really been upped this year.

“You go in every training session trying to nail your spot for the last couple of games. The lads did nothing wrong, they played brilliant all year. It was unlucky for Joey and Brian this day but that’s the nature of sport. Pádraig came in and he was outstanding today and I played a certain part of it. I’m just delighted. Everyone wants to start in the final and you go out and you train your hardest.”

Two cameos from the end of it all. The last Tipp player to touch the ball in open play was Brendan Maher, the team captain running to the last but again finding his ambitions snuffed out around the Kilkenny 45. Dispossessed by Buckley, ball cleared by Fogarty.

And when the final whistle sounded, where was Cody? Not in the spot where he’d stood for the day but right down towards the Canal End. Standing in line with his half-back line, pointing, organising, cajoling. Living.

Winning another All Ireland. Built on the line that was the starting point for so many won before.