`We'll be a force for a while'

Doctor's orders: No back slaps for Willie O'Connor. The quietest man in the Kilkenny dressing-room is the one who has reason to be shouting the loudest. However, a suspected broken rib - sustained at the end of the first half - explains why the team's captain can be found breathing in carefully measured intakes.

"I went to field a ball just before halftime and got a belt and then got another one after the break. It's very sore but I never even considered coming off. It was easier to just keep going," explains O'Connor. Truth is, nobody, not even wild horses, could have dragged him off the pitch yesterday.

But without the adrenaline rush of running and contesting for the ball, O'Connor's injury is finally taking its toll and words are extracted with the sort of discomfort a patient might display to an overzealous dentist in explaining his toothache.

Losing the previous two All-Irelands had provided a bitter pill for O'Connor and this latest win was, he whispered, "simply brilliant. We're a good side. You don't reach three All-Ireland finals in three years by being a bad side. Things didn't go for us last year (against Cork) and you've got to have a bit of luck to win and we got our luck today."

You could argue that Kilkenny's long hard nights of training over the winter months entitled them to make their own luck. And this time last year John Power, having worked his way back into the side after his surprise omission the previous year, wondered if he had any place left in the Kilkenny set-up. But a pre-Christmas talk with manager Brian Cody convinced him he should give it another go.

"I wouldn't say that this is a dream come true because I had every intention of making it come true," insists Power, who was dropped from the Kilkenny squad in 1998, something which - even in the glow of yesterday's win - obviously still rankles.

"I was very annoyed at being left out in 1998 and I never spoke arrogantly about being dropped then. The only thing that I was disappointed about in '98 is that I had served Kilkenny hurling for 11 years and I got no phone call, no letter, or no letter of acknowledgement in any shape or form, good, bad or indifferent, and that hurt me more."

So, when Cody came knocking at his door Power, in his own words, "set out on a mission".

"Brian Cody gave me the opportunity to come back, to show if there was anything left in the tank. I knuckled down to it and trained. I had a great season last year, as good as ever, but it all came off the rails in the final. To be beaten and taken off was an awful blow to take," recalls Power.

However, that chat with Cody brought him back for another year . . . even if there was a touch of deja vu about failing to make the team for the opening match of the championship. "When I wasn't picked for the match against Dublin, it was as if they were intent on giving me a pinch and I knuckled down again, got on the road and I've ended up here in Croke Park today.

"There is no way we were ever going to be beaten. All through the campaign, against Dublin, Offaly in the Leinster final, against Galway and today, we came up to blow everyone out. We were under pressure to perform today but everyone stood up and was counted. Losing didn't come into the equation.

"When we went 10 points up at halftime, no matter what team came out in the second half weren't going to haul that back. It's an unbelievable feeling and I will relish it for the next few weeks.

"There are a lot of good young lads now in this squad and Kilkenny hurling is in a good old state. I reckon we'll be a force for a while now that the pressure has gone away. A lot of those lads can relax now and play hurling," says Power. Manager Cody can point at the micro-cassette recorders under his nose and claim that the players should be the ones to take all the credit, but the players themselves are tossing much of the credit his way too.

Cody doesn't look the least bit surprised that his men have fulfilled their destiny and reclaimed hurling's top prize. "We came here sure in the knowledge that we should win the game and that we were good enough to win the game, but then it is all about what happens in 70 minutes and you can never be sure in sport. But when you see the focus of the team, the determination of the team, the will of the team and their intensity in training, it is something you don't experience very often and a team committed is very hard to beat."

Of course, the start was a dream one for Kilkenny. "It was a great start . . . it gave us a massive, massive tonic. I was very confident after that, although I knew we weren't going to dominate all through. You don't come up and play Offaly and turn on the style like that for 70 minutes and there were stages when we had to hang in and fight. Offaly don't surrender, don't give up, and I think we showed how good a team we are."

Cody thinks there are more good moments to come too. "Whoever the manager of this team is going to be, he wouldn't swap them . . . I'd say!" Which would indicate that, now they have rediscovered the winning habit, they are loathe to lose it again.