TJ Reid is the best hurler in the country right now.
Simple as. A player who can turn a game on its head in an instant, a player who’s been doing that consistently for a good few years now.
Operating at the very peak of his powers at the moment, Reid ran amok in a potent League final showing against Tipperary. The best thing about Kilkenny’s deadliest weapon, however, is the regularity with which he turns in displays like that one.
With his balance, power, pace and touch so refined and so relaxed, you actually would find it hard to see him remaining on the periphery of any game he plays in.
When you watch TJ Reid play, you see a man completely at one with the game, you see a man at one with the hurl in his left hand and the sliotar in his right.
You hear lads talking about players who can make the ball talk – forget talking balls because TJ Reid can make the O’Neills sliotar scream with levels of ball manipulation that very few players can even come close to.
The man does what he wants with the ball and the ball does as he says with a robotic level of efficiency. It may only take a gentle flick of the wrists, it may not even take that much because with the deftest of flicks or moves, TJ is there one second and he’s gone the next.
Ask any Tipperary defender about him and they’ll tell you that much, because he’s been their tormentor in chief for years now.
Consistency has come with experience for Reid who, like the majority of Kilkenny’s best players under Brian Cody, he took a good while to really nail himself down as a mainstay of the black and amber jersey.
Now he’s their go-to player when the chips are down. Now he’s the leader.
It’s no coincidence then that the Ballyhale Shamrocks man lives and breathes the game, that he’s constantly pucking the ball around the place, that his quest for self improvement doesn’t stop when training is over.
That’s what got him to where he is today.
A past student of the most famous hurling nursery in the country, in St Kieran’s College in Kilkenny City, TJ recently visited his old school and his first words to the pupils he met there show just how submerged he is in the game.
“TJ Reid came in here the other day to talk to a bunch of students, the first thing he said was, ‘it’s great to see that you all have hurls with you,” said the school’s deputy principal Liam Smith to SportsJOE recently.
GAA Hour Show host Colm Parkinson was speaking to Brian Cody recently and the Kilkenny manager told Wooly all about TJ’s attitude to hurling.
“I’d say TJ couldn’t give up hurling. If anybody ever thinks that, it’s crazy. I’d say TJ will want to be hurling in ten years time, he’s one of those fellas who just loves hurling. It means so much to TJ,” said Cody.
It is often said that the practice fellas put in away from the training field is what can really improve them – that practice comes as second nature to TJ because he lives for the buzz of hitting that perfect strike and taking that perfect touch, and that’s why his is always so lethal.
“He’d puck around forever. Training doesn’t stop for TJ, but it’s not just the training, it’s the hurling, out there pucking around – all that sort of stuff, he loves it…That’s what has turned him into the player he is.”
Cody doesn’t agree with the notion that TJ is only coming of age now. He feels that this man has been at the top of the game for a while and he only sees that continuing into the future.
“TJ has been a terrific player. I’ve seen him with the club playing phenomenal games. He had a couple of injuries over the years, so hopefully now he can carry on and be the player he’s capable of being.”
Comparisons were inevitably drawn between Reid and his club man Henry Shefflin, but Cody was quick to bat those aside.
“I’m not interested in comparing TJ to anybody at all, certainly not to Henry. He’s his own player. He has had a very good League for us. His free-taking has been terrific, his general play has been outstanding, but that’s the level he’s at.”
TJ’s transition to the role of a leader in the dressing room has really impressed Cody.
“They all came in as young lads, too. They know the benefit of having lads driving the thing forward. That’s the way it works.”
He’s some example to any young hurlers.
You can listen to the Cody interview and much more here from Monday’s GAA Hour Show.
