In today’s Hospital Pass, we consider Kilkenny’s conundrum of squeezing too many top-class forwards into too few positions, and take Donegal to task over their stated ambition of world domination.
Everyone knows Kilkenny is a conveyor belt of hurling forwards. Brian Cody routinely sends out a forward line which has a collective total of 94 All-Ireland titles and 237 All-Stars.
And that’s not taking into account the other half-dozen of the best in the country he has at his disposal, kicking their heels on the bench just waiting for their chance to wreak havoc on some poor, unfortunate corner back.
In an interesting development over the last few days, it looks like either (a) Cody has discovered the answer to the conundrum, or (b) the Cats manager has lost his marbles.
If you’ve so many top forwards that you don’t know what to do with them, what’s the one thing you should not do? We would suggest: playing one of them at corner back.
But that’s where Aidan “Taggy” Fogarty ended up at the weekend, the 2006 All-Ireland final Man of the Match corner forward lining up in the full back line for a training game.
Our friends in the north
In Ulster, meanwhile, the dust has hardly settled on their first Ulster title in 19 years and Donegal are already eyeing up bigger prey.
The days of Martin McHugh, Anthony Molloy and Tony Boyle are long since gone and Donegal, at last, have a new set of heroes. Michael Murphy, the 22-year-old captain and star man. Colm McFadden, now realising the potential he’s shown for several summers. Michael Hegarty, enjoying a golden end to years of silver service.
After cowering beneath the long and intimidating shadows of Tyrone and Armagh for so many years, you’d think they’d be satisfied with their lot this week, wouldn’t you?
But no. Having finally got an Ulster medal in his mitts, Karl Lacey, the white-booted, double-All-Star defender now has his eye on the bigger picture – an All-Ireland challenge and Ulster domination.
“Jim [McGuinness, the manager] has the belief that we can go the whole way and we have the players to do it. He has a five-year plan for us. This is only his first year.
“Armagh stepped it up after making the breakthrough [in 1999] and we want to dominate Ulster the way they did. We want to be back here next year and defend our title.”
Hold on, Karl, let’s walk before we run. We’ll see what Donegal are made of when they get to Croke Park in a few weeks’ time. It hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses for them over the past few years.
