Late Power surge particularly sweet for Richie

Like his football counterpart Kieran Donaghy, Richie Power made his move late in the season to spring to prominence.

In the case of the Kilkenny hurler, absence from the team had been caused by injury to a posterior cruciate ligament but his contribution after coming on as a semi-final replacement and in the two matches that followed mirrored Donaghy’s - goals to turn both the semi-final and final and ultimately to capture the September GAA/GPA Player of the Month award, sponsored by Opel.

Although Power would score four of Kilkenny’s seven goals in the final three matches, he was left unable to watch in the dying seconds of the drawn All-Ireland final, as John O’Dwyer addressed the late free from 97 metres, which could have sent the Liam MacCarthy Cup back to Tipperary.

“Obviously when Bubbles (O’Dwyer) stood over the last free you’re praying and hoping that it will somehow drift wide even though how far back it was. I knew well he was going to have the distance because he’s a ferocious striker of a ball.

“To be honest I didn’t even look at the free. I didn’t look up at the screen to see had it gone wide. I waited for the reaction of the crowd and thankfully it slipped by, by a couple of centimetres maybe - looking at the papers.”

There was probably no-one in the crowd of 82,179 wishing more fervently than Power that O’Dwyer’s shot wouldn’t make the target. With Kilkenny leading by four and the match drifting beyond Tipperary, he found himself with a chance of a point but elected to go for broke.

“We put ourselves in a position that day of the drawn game to maybe push on and win it,” he said. “Personally I made a wrong decision as well during the game down here in front of the Hill 16. It was a chance to pop the ball over the bar and give us a five-point lead but instead I decided I’d go for the jugular.

“It was intercepted, went up the other end for a point which brought it back to three.”

Power has been so long regarded as an up-and-coming player that it’s a bit of a shock to look at the scale of his achievements. Since making his goal-scoring debut at the age of 19 in the 31-point annihilation of Offaly back in 2005, the Carrickshock player (he will feature in the first round of the county championship against Erin’s Own tomorrow) has accumulated seven All-Ireland medals and two All Stars.

In context, up until three years ago, only two men had won more than seven All-Irelands on the field of play. That hierarchy has changed, as Kilkenny teammate Henry Shefflin has racked up eight, nine and last month Celtic crosses.

With Shefflin confined to walk-on roles this year, did Power and his generation of players regard the latest medal as being of special significance, the year that they emerged from under the protective wing?

"I wouldn't say significant, no, because there's no person or player that could ever replace him. Even the impact that Henry had on the whole set-up or squad and panel this year was phenomenal. Brian was always onto us - I remember in 2012 and '13 - for the likes of myself or TJ or Richie Hogan to take over the responsibility of taking the frees and playing in a more central position, centre forward or full forward to take that little bit of pressure off Henry.

“Since 1999 or 2000 Henry’s been carrying the weight of the county on his shoulders because Henry’s Henry. All we try to do is do our best for the team, try to do our best to take a little bit of that burden off Henry but I don’t think even Henry saw that himself. He only ever went out to do his best for the team.

“His work rate has always been phenomenal. You look back on every single game Henry Shefflin has hurled and his work rate, compared to his scores, would by far top his scores and I think that’s the one aspect of Henry Shefflin that a lot of people do see but mightn’t comment on it enough: his genuineness, his work rate, his fitness levels are just phenomenal.”

He does acknowledge, however, that this All-Ireland win was special after what happened in 2013 when injuries and lost form combined to give the county their most disappointing championship of manager Brian Cody’s era with defeat by Dublin in Leinster and Cork in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

“We’ve had a good chat about it, a good few of us. I’d definitely rank it up there with the best, probably alongside ‘06. A lot of guys were mentioning 2011 as well after being beaten in 2010 but I suppose this year it was extra sweet because with the way last year went and being written off in a lot of places outside Kilkenny, just saying maybe that a lot of players were coming to the end of their careers.”

This year Power benefited - even during the recovery period after his knee injury - from some ramped-up work on his personal fitness levels. It was his response to a dispiriting season, which got worse with his club reaching the county final and under-performing.

“Yeah it was. I think after the county final it was hugely disappointing on a personal level, even at club level it was a huge disappointment for the club, me personally I wasn’t happy with my own performances throughout the club season and even last year with Kilkenny I wasn’t overly happy with the way the year went for me and I just took a decision. A good friend of mine offered to give me a hand doing a bit of personal training and I jumped on board with that in November.

“I just got myself in good shape which at inter-county level you have to be. It’s gone as close to professional now as it is ever going to get.”

After his 10th season on the inter-county treadmill, do the demands get easier or harder to meet?

“It definitely doesn’t get harder because it is where every player wants to be. There were 37 of us involved this year, probably 50 or 60 other players knocking on the door trying to get in.

“That’s where everyone wants to be. You make up your mind at the beginning of the year that you have to make that commitment. You can’t semi make that commitment, you can’t give it three-quarters or 95 per cent. It has to be 100 per cent.

“That’s to commit to collective training, to gym work, to recovery. You commit to lifestyle, diet, absolutely everything. There’s no guy on that panel at the moment that wouldn’t be willing to do that.

“The day that you think about it and even one of those on the list that you’re willing to waver a little bit, the day that happens is the day that you seriously have to consider if you’re able to give the 100 per cent commitment.”