Brian Cody believes his men are fully intent on avenging their Leinster final defeat, writes GAVIN CUMMISKEY

THERE WAS some giddiness on the drive home from the umpteenth Kilkenny pre-All-Ireland final media night. Usually stale affairs, Brian Cody had sat down to be interviewed with an agenda. Or maybe he was captivated by the line of questioning . . . unlikely for a man of his intelligence.

He was definitely still simmering from the gruesome injury sustained by Michael Rice against Tipperary.

Cody was unusually chatty on the topic of refereeing and physicality and how he hoped the two wouldn’t cancel each other out come the final.

It wasn’t the 58-year-old giving Westmeath official Barry Kelly a public warning ahead of the final against Galway, more a shot across the bow of officialdom. The concern was that Kelly would be instructed to tighten up a sport that must be allowed to flow. “I think there could be a stupid reaction now.”

A few Tipperary players’ actions also got a lashing without being named. He suggested Kilkenny would be tarred with the same brush. “That’s the insinuation that’s there. That there is this crazy game coming up. This mad team is going out to play again.”

It wasn’t vintage Cody speak. It was completely novel Cody speak. It’s accepted he knows more about hurling than everyone in the media combined. He doesn’t bother sharing much with us, but answers any question once he feels it isn’t loaded. If he thinks it’s loaded there will be consequences.

Remember the RTÉ interview in 2009? Cody wasn’t prepared to allow the immediate aftermath of the All-Ireland final become about Diarmuid Kirwan’s penalty shout that led to Henry Shefflin ultimately steering a tight contest Kilkenny’s way and securing the four in a row. (“I can’t understand, Marty, how this discussion with me is turning into a debate about a referee.”)

He is much harder on his players, mind. They rarely speak about him. They just behave in the manner he envisages hurling should be played. With savage intensity. They got branded as dirty some years back and that sticks in his craw. “We’re always associated with physicality – I’d say we’re very skilful as well. And very disciplined as well, I would say.”

The Leinster final, while a shock to the system, wasn’t enough to tempt Cody to reinvent the wheel. Of Kilkenny’s seven championship defeats, from 60 outings during his 14-year reign, three have been at the hands of the Tribesmen. The 2001 All-Ireland semi-final loss made the Cody mantra easier to embrace. Galway were more powerful that day. The 2005 All-Ireland semi-final was western hurling at its freewheeling best. Kilkenny were obliterated yet only lost by three points.

This year’s first instalment was over before half-time. The opposition producing a combination of strength, accuracy and desire that Kilkenny minus Michael Fennelly, Rice and JJ Delaney were unable to match man for man. It seemed like the end. From the outside anyway.

“No, certainly there was no sense of a panic. It wasn’t as if there was a fundamental problem, or at least we hoped there wasn’t, of a lack of honesty or anything like that. There was a huge, huge lesson for us.

“I would have a huge trust in the players. You can see it in them, their attitude, their level of disappointment afterwards, I’d have had absolute confidence that they were going to be completely honest in their attempts to rectify what happened on Leinster final day and their attitude was top class.

“At the end of the day you go back and work. There’s no magical way of doing it. We wouldn’t have been thinking of any major dramatic change after that, no.”

He closed the gates of Nowlan Park for training and set about steeling these already legendary hurlers for yet another colossal response. Limerick were culled by goals, naturally. Then came Tipperary. The most respected rivals of recent times blown away by hurling from another plain. Galway must go again to have any chance.

“I’d always have Galway written up there as one of the teams capable of winning the All-Ireland final every year or certainly getting to it every year. Sometime they’re just going to take off and no one will handle them really and they hit that day in the Leinster final. They were at a different level to us in every aspect of our play so no, it wasn’t a surprise to us.”

The image from last Sunday’s Dublin-Mayo football semi-final, when the clearly dislocated finger of an otherwise prone Lee Keegan was raised in the air, might have brought back some bad memories for Cody, when he thinks of Rice leaving the pitch during the match against Tipperary with a lacerated hand, seven fractures and a crushed knuckle.

“I see a lot of players groaning in agony without getting a belt but Michael Rice got a horrific belt. He stood up and walked off the pitch and didn’t lie down, that’s an indication of how we try to approach the game.”