Intensity.
Intensity. Something something intensity.
It’s a simple game in Kilkenny. Raise the bloody intensity.
Brian Cody doesn’t attribute their success to tactics or any of that rubbish – not this season anyway. It’s been a small matter of raising it when they had to. The intensity.
He’s probably bullshitting us all most of the time but his interviews have become renowned now. The hurling legend – the man that will go down as one of the greatest ever, no matter what happens in the next 200 years – is almost better at giving nothing away than he is at managing.
You can’t break Cody’s media mask. It’s just a series of buzz words and generic cliches until you eventually give up.
Every interview of Brian Cody’s takes on a life of its own but, during Kilkenny’s press night ahead of the All-Ireland hurling final, the Cats boss filled plenty of column inches with his favourite word, intensity.
He managed to clarify what the word meant, where you see examples of it and why it’s not a bad thing. In doing so, he almost prepared everyone for many more soundbites of the same thing.
“People speak about intensity as if it’s something negative about it,” Cody said. “It’s a hugely positive thing. It’s probably what allows you to express yourself as a hurler.
“In terms of intensity, all you expect is that everybody gives everything they have really. You give yourself to the team, essentially, is what you do. That’s the requirement, because it’s a team sport and the same holds true for all sport.
“If a player is going out just to play his own game and try and do things that’ll make him look good, that’s not going to get you anywhere. No real team player does that, so it’s a question of everybody contributing to the team, and you can contribute in different ways.
“Intensity is just trying to dominate your position. Then there’s parts of the game, for certain, where you’re under pressure and you’re hanging in there and you have to have those levels again that will allow you to hang in. What you do in those situations are crucially important, as well just to even survive there. It’s a combination of lots of things.”
But, mostly, it’s about intensity.
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