All-Ireland SHC Final / The Kilkenny tradition: Tom Humphries hears from two of the game's experts the logic behind Kilkenny's success.

The more things change in hurling, the more they stay the same. After the ferment of the 1990s, tradition has reasserted itself. A Kilkenny win this weekend will create a little hurling history. They will pull level with Cork on 28 senior titles and pull still farther ahead of Tipperary.

Given that Kilkenny won their first All-Ireland in 1904, by which time Cork and Tipp had six apiece, it's been a slow climb to the peak but a steady one, and when Kilkenny claim statistical pre-eminence they do so from a position of almost complete authority. And the impression is that Kilkenny are pulling away from the field.

A minor win tomorrow makes them the dominant figures of that grade. The domination of St Kieran's at schools level continues. Even at the B grade in schools competition, the emergence of Castlecomer CBS last year has been noted as an index of the depth of talent within the county. At under-21 level the gap between Kilkenny and Cork should soon close a little further when Kilkenny contest the All-Ireland final.

There is little doubt, as Mike McNamara said earlier this year, that if counties model themselves on Kilkenny they will progress. "They don't do much wrong," says McNamara.

The converse of that argument is that Kilkenny don't have room for that temptation. They don't stray into football fields. Soccer is a novelty pursuit in the county. More so than the citizens of Cork or Tipperary, the people of Kilkenny live in a universe of pure hurling The county makes virtually no effort at football and sits atop the Leinster hurling heap on good days and bad.

Recently the days have all been bad for the rest of the province. Kilkenny's rivals in the big three cartel, Cork and Tipperary, have Munster to contend with each year - not just each other to worry about but Clare, Limerick and Waterford. Kilkenny don't face the same challenge.

"Realistically speaking," says Brian Whelahan of Offaly, "Munster is the only real hurling province. Back in the 70s and 80s you saw it with the Kerry footballers - apart from the odd game against Cork they breezed out of Munster. Kilkenny have the same advantage now. They are the only out-and-out hurling county in the country. Nowhere else is so predominantly hurling-oriented."

Dermot Healy, who knows the inside of the machine better than almost anybody, has no doubt that Kilkenny enjoy certain advantages but some of them are of their own creation.

"Looking at Kilkenny from a Dublin perspective, a model which would apply to many counties, the single-code culture is an advantage. I can't stress that enough in Dublin. A young kid in Kilkenny will have his hurley in his hand twice a day. In Dublin if it's twice a week it's a bonus.

"That culture in Kilkenny has given rise to a pure hurling tradition. Teachers and coaches know what the game is about. In Dublin and other counties they approach hurling from a footballing point of view. It's like speaking Irish but thinking in English."

And within that tradition there has grown a sense of shared responsibility Whelahan has identified as critical to Kilkenny's wellbeing.

"In 2000, when they won nothing at underage level but won a senior All-Ireland, they took stock. They went away and put a structure of coaching in place all over the county which has paid huge dividends. They divided the county up into five regions and they have a group of about 30 players in each region, players between the ages of 14 and 16, and they get coaching from a rota of past county players, top-class hurlers who take it in turns at weekends to coach them. That's a huge investment before minor level. It's a lot to pass on."

Healy credits much of the thought that goes into the game to Monsignor Tommy Maher, who masterminded the 1957 All-Ireland win, which put an end to a worrying period of Wexford hegemony in Leinster and beyond. Kilkenny responded to Wexford's physical presence scientifically, playing low diagonal balls, skipping out first to the ball and delivering it quick off both sides.

"Monsignor Maher would have had a huge influence on the game in the county. He gave Kilkenny a new level of coaching and a new approach. He was instrumental in beginning the Gormanston residential courses of the late 60s, and of course his influence on St Kieran's is incalculable. So much of the tradition of Kilkenny hurling has been transmitted from that time."

The current phase of Kilkenny dominance is due also, Healy suspects, to the manner in which the senior side is run. After a run of six Leinster titles and overwhelming dominance in the minor grade, Kilkenny's failure to find much meaningful competition could have induced complacency. Instead the competition for places is ferocious.

"You see it in the senior team - Brian Cody allows the team to change. If a player is introduced during the league and shows well he's told that he'll stay in the team come the championship. In most counties that doesn't happen but in Kilkenny whoever is playing best gets the jersey. That means the competition for places is ferocious. The training sessions the senior team have are a battle for places. It explains why they find it so easy to step up in the second half of big games. They play so hard in training every night."

The continuing tradition of St Kieran's contrasts with the cyclical rise and fall of other schools. No other school, not even St Flannan's, has the influence on the affairs of the county team Kieran's has.

Brian Whelahan's personal experience of secondary school is to have attended an institution which was devoted to hurling at one stage but now competes in a wide range of sports of which hurling is just one.

"St Kieran's operates like one of the specialist rugby schools, places like Clongowes or Blackrock or Rockwell College. Hurling is the sport. Within the school everyone wants to be on the team. They have boarders from around and from other counties and that helps the standard too. Fellas are playing all the time and getting top coaching.

"In other counties we have a system where a full-time coach goes into a school once a week. In fairness to him or her, it's not enough. It doesn't work. The teachers have to do the bulk of the coaching. We don't have enough teachers who want to do that."

Within Kilkenny itself the game has assumed a more democratic spread. The old parish-based dynasties used only be challenged by James Stephens in the city. Now Dicksboro and O'Loughlin Gaels have grown into respectability, the latter winning a Féile na nGael title this spring.

Win or lose tomorrow the structure of Kilkenny's excellence seems embedded. Every summer produces new names and word of immense promise down the line.

Whelahan is convinced that Kilkenny's excellence is everyone else's challenge.

"We have to match them. We have to take their structures and apply them. We've all a long way to go before we have our structures right but we just have to pull up. Ourselves, Wexford, other counties - we have to take stock and apply the lessons because it's bad for the game if we don't."

Is there hope? Dermot Healy thinks so. He evangelises in Dublin and knows that nothing stays the same forever.

"In 1975 in Kilkenny I remember we won the senior, under-21 and minor All-Ireland titles and all the talk was would anybody ever beat Kilkenny. I spoke at a dinner that winter and I said when empires are at their greatest that's when they are most likely to crumble. We didn't win a thing the following year."

On that slender thread many hopes hang.