By the time Barry Kelly's final whistle brought Sunday's All-Ireland final to a close, the myth-makers were already at work: Kilkenny had outfought Cork all over the park and should have won pulling up. The Cats had finally divined a plan to neutralise Cork's puckout strategy and stifle their running game. Noel Hickey had "destroyed" Brian Corcoran (this from Nicky English in 'The Irish Times'). According to numerous posters on this website, Diarmuid O'Sullivan was useless. And so it went on.

The fact is that Kilkenny won this game by a single puck of the ball. Maybe
they should have won by more, but Cork hit their own fair share of bad wides. The fact is that the Leesiders have been moving ever closer to the edge over the last two years. Their scoring rate has been remarkably consistent over that period - a total of 20.2 points in five championship games in 2005 and exactly 20 in four games up to last Sunday. The old guru from Down, Joe McGrath, used to say that 20 points is the minimum scoring target in a hurling game, as few teams who score that amount lose.

So the key to beating Cork was to either score more than 20 points or bring
Cork's score below that level. In their previous two matches, Waterford and
Limerick had just about managed the latter, but couldn't get enough scores
themselves. However, Cork's winning margins were narrowing all the time -
from an average of 4.8 points in 2005 to 2.8 points before last Sunday. Beating Cork was all about achieving a minor shift in the scoring balance,and this Kilkenny achieved last Sunday. And they did it by marginally reducing the effectiveness of the Cork half back line and midfield.

Part of the myth-making in relation to Cork is that they stuck rigidly to their running game last Sunday. In fact, they hit loads of long ball into their forwards, but given Kilkenny's legendary defensive tightness, especially under the high ball, and Cork's lack of ball winners up front, this was never going to be a route to victory. Cork's answer to their known weaknesses up front has been their running game, based on their ability to win ball at half back and transferring it to Jerry O'Connor and Tom Kenny in midfield. It was here that Kilkenny managed to shift the balance just enough to give them a victory platform.

The key element in this shift was the second half eclipse of Seán Óg Ó hAilpín. In the 35 minutes of regulation play after the interval, Ó hAilpín
played the ball just twice - in both cases taking short puckouts from Donal
Óg Cusack while unmarked. In the same period, his marker Richie Power played the ball no less than ten times. A second key element in the Cats' success was their ability to crowd out or dispossess Cork players when they did gain possession in the midfield area. This was partly achieved by bringing their midfielders and half forwards back for Cork puckouts and frees out, and partly by having their own strong and/or speedy runners operating in the area.

With Cork's scoring threat sufficiently neutralised, the final element in
Kilkenny's winning formula was to get enough scores themselves. And again
they achieved the marginal edge required to achieve this, in that seven of
their players scored from play as against five for Cork. They might have scored more, but apart from their thirteen wides, they played a lot of terrible aimless ball into their forwards - perhaps a natural result of the frenzied nature of their play around the midfield area.

It was a game in which the count of individual plays was not as instructive
as on other occasions. This because this was a game in which stopping others from playing was as important as playing the ball the ball yourself. Noel Hicky only played the ball five times altogether - and just once in the second half. However, his opposite number, Brian Corcoran, also only had five plays, and this was a crucial ingredient in the Cats' victory - against Waterford, Corcoran had twice as many plays.

Contrary to those who think that Kilkenny dominated the game territorially,in fact there was very little between the teams in terms of overall plays, with Kilkenny just shading it 154-152. In the first half, Kilkenny had an advantage of four (78-74) but Cork reversed this after the interval (78-76). In terms of individual plays, three players led the way for Kilkenny with 17 each. Two of these were predictable - Tommy Walsh and Cha Fitzpatrick - but the third perhaps not: Martin Comerford, who played the ball a phenomenal 13 times in the first half, although his effectiveness dropped considerably after the change of ends. The other Kilkenny players to make it into double figures were Richie Power (13, although it took him 26 minutes to make his first play), John Tennyson (12), Henry Sheflin (11) and Derek Lyng and Aidan Fogarty (10 each).

For Cork, Jerry O'Connor - as ever - led the way with 18 plays, followed
closely by Ronan Curran (17) and Diarmuid O'Sullivan (16). The Rock/Pebble
had an excellent game for the rebels. The other Cork players to make double
figures were John Gardiner (13) and Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, Niall McCarthy and Ben O'Connor (11 each). Gardiner played a lot more ball than he did against Waterford, but used it very poorly. Of course, he should never have finished the match: it was amazing that the nastiness of his pull across Eoin Larkin's foot was not as apparent to Dicky Murphy standing a few metres away as it was to us sitting in the upper deck of the Cusack Stand.

The greatest myth of all to emerge from last Sunday's game is that Kilkenny had found a way to neutralise Cork's puckout strategy. Pete Finnerty got himself tied up in self-contradictory confusion trying to argue this point on the Sunday Game [Incidentally, Michael Duignan's incisive observations on this programme once again exposed the vacuousness of his fellow panellists: the hurling confraternity is not well served by persevering with Finnerty and Mulcahy, not to mention the imbecilic Pat Spillane, who knows nothing about the game and seems to be interested only in generating controversy and scoring points off the other panel members].

Kilkenny did have a sensible strategy in moving all their lines back out the
field for Cork puckouts. This allowed them to crowd the long puckouts(which they probably would have won anyway), including any long (and predictable) deliveries which might have resulted from short puckouts by Cusack to his unmarked fullbacks. However, Cusack only resorted to the short puckout four times in the game. Otherwise, he gave the best display of accurate pucking out this observer has ever seen in a hurling game. An Moltóir counted 16 puckouts which Cusack directed to specific Cork players (usually Niall McCarthy or Jerry O'Connor) outside the Cork 65 metre line (and frequently in the Kilkenny half of the pitch). Of these, twelve were won by Cork with only four going to Kilkenny. A success rate of two thirds on your own puckout is phenomenal in hurling.

Compare this with Cusack's third option, the long, high puckout, which he opted for ten times. Of these, Cork won only three (which would be about typical for puckouts of this type). In essence, this kind of puckout is for mugs, and Cork have worked very hard to perfect the art of retaining possession from their own puckout. Once, in the second half, Niall McCarthy dashed forty metres across the pitch to field one of Cusack's puckouts: both dash and puckout were timed perfectly so that McCarthy and the ball arrived simultaneously in the target space.

To suggest that Sunday's result signals a new era in hurling may be just a bit previous. Kilkenny won by a single puck of the ball, just as Cork did against Waterford and Limerick. If the latter two could make better use of the available talent, they could be in line for a breakthrough. Galway's stream of under-age talent seems to be unending, while Tipperary also finally app