By Tommy Walsh

Bill Hennessy, a great Tullaroan club-man, once passed me on some advice he was given by one of the best hurlers to ever come out of Kilkenny, Willie O'Connor.

Willie told Bill that if it came down to it he'd much rather be fresh than fit. That stuck in my mind throughout my career.

I'd liken the mindset you need for Championship hurling to sitting down to your dinner having not had a scrap to eat all day.

No matter what's put in front of you, you'll have it demolished in no time.

But if you've eaten an hour before your dinner, then you'll end up picking at it and pushing it around the plate.

When it comes to Championship hurling, you better be ready to eat your dinner. And fast.

I remember playing for Leinster in the Railway Cup in 2008 and we had a training session one night in Tinryland down in Carlow.

A few of us Kilkenny lads went down together in the car and it was miserable night for hurling, raining hard and freezing cold.

Eddie Coady from the Mount Leinster Rangers club in Carlow marked a couple of the Kilkenny lads in training that night in a game of backs and forwards and tore strips off them.

He won the ball high, low, in front, behind; it didn't matter what way it came. Absolutely hurled the ears off them.

We were going home in the car that night from Carlow and we knew we weren't at the races. We knew we weren't ready. We had no edge or zest for it the way Eddie Coady had.

We had thought we wanted to win the Railway Cup, but we weren't acting like it. Eddie was.

We were proud Leinster men and we wanted to win it but we weren't doing what it took. So, we promised ourselves on that car journey home that we'd be ready the next day.

We ended up beating Connacht in the semi-final and Munster in the Final. That's what hunger does. It drives on the whole team and has you ready for game day.

That's what belief can do for you. It can drive a Carlow hurler to tear into Kilkenny hurlers and come out with the ball time after time.

Belief and hunger. There are many ingredients to win a championship hurling match, but they are two of the most vital.

The fundamental law of the game is that matches are won by teams who are better equipped to win their own ball.

Many people believe the best ball-winners have to be six-foot-plus and weigh 14 stone, but they're mistaken.

A broad set of shoulders and a big arse can be handy under a dropping ball, but they offer no guarantee you'll win the thing.

Speed, skill, timing, technique, and self-belief are just as important attributes to have as strength when it comes to winning your own ball. And to be the best, you need them all.

Because you have no chance of succeeding at the highest level of the game unless you can combine skill with a savage will to win that ball.

You need that self-belief to persuade yourself mentally and physically that you're going to win it. The only thought running through your mind should be, 'I'm going to win that ball and nothing is going to stop me'. That's what self-belief is.

When I think of that sort of mind-set, I think of Noel Hickey in the 2007 All-Ireland Final against Limerick.

He pulled his hamstring in the first few minutes when the ball came into the danger area and he was chasing Mike Fitzgerald.

Another fella would have hit the ground and no-one would have said anything, but not Noel.

He kept going, ran Mike Fitz out to the corner of the Cusack Stand, danger averted. That was Hickey, that was self-belief and hunger.

The best county hurlers all have an iron-clad self-belief and steely will to win, so the margins can be very fine when it comes to Championship hurling.

And to give yourself to best chance of having an edge over your man, I think it goes back to that freshness that Willie O’Connor prized so much.

I was reminded of it again when I watched the rowers from Skibbereen, Shane O'Driscoll and Mark O'Donovan, interviewed after they won a European gold medal two weeks ago.

They said that their coach had made them put away their oars for a couple of days before the race because he wanted them hungry.

So, by the time the race came around, they were starving for action and went out and blew the rest of the field away.

A Championship match is something similar. When it comes around, a player must get the balance right between training, dieting, gym, and freshness.

Everybody is different. What works for one fella might not work for another fella.

Some guys do everything by the book, do everything their coach tells them to do, but then on game day they're flat. They were just ticking boxes.

Sometimes you shouldn't do what you're told to do. You don't measure every calorie that goes into your body or do every gym session that's been prescribed. You don't go to the ball-alley every second day.

Sometimes you have to make the brave decision to do what's right for you, which can change from week to week and year to year.

That doesn't mean to slack off on your gym programme because you're tired. That's laziness.

You don't do it because you've tried it already a few times and it hasn't worked for you.

You might have been in better physical condition than you ever were before, but you were missing that edge, that zing, that absolute hunger to win every ball that came into your patch.

Your focus should be on preparing yourself in the best way possible to have you in that mindset for game-day.

If that means watching every meal you eat, going to the alley every second day, and hopping off the weights in the gym, then that's what you have to do.

If it means keeping yourself fresh in the two weeks before the game, then that's what it takes. Everyone is different, and you have to be brave enough to realise that and your manager has to be mentally strong enough to give you that leeway if necessary.

When I hurled for Kilkenny, Brian Cody trusted us to do whatever was right for ourselves away from collective training to get in the best shape possible.

He knew we took our hurling as seriously as he did so he’d give us that little bit of latitude. He’d figure out fairly quickly if you were pulling the wool over his eyes, because all would be revealed in a training game or the match at the weekend.

Belief, hunger, and freshness. Those are the three factors I think are going to be so important when Kilkenny and Wexford do battle in the Leinster semi-final in Wexford Park tomorrow.

Will Wexford have the same hunger that they had in the League? Do Wexford really believe they can beat Kilkenny in the Championship?

Are Kilkenny good enough anymore? The more experienced guys with multiple All-Ireland medals will certainly come down to Wexford Park convinced they are, but how about the younger players? Might they have doubts?

Both teams have good reason to be seriously fired up for this match.

Beating Kilkenny in front of a packed Wexford Park baying for blood would be a coming of age moment for this Wexford team.

The flip side of the coin is that if I was a Kilkenny player I’d be viewing this match as a dream scenario.

We owe Wexford one for beating us in the League at Nowlan Park, and everyone is saying Kilkenny are on a downward spiral.

Nothing got me better prepared for Championship matches than people doubting the team. These Kilkenny lads will love that.

But just because the stakes are high or a team has something to prove doesn't necessarily mean they have the self-belief and hunger to get the job done.

Everyone expected Tipp to come out against Cork with a hunger like never before because of the manner in which they lost the League Final to Galway but it didn’t happen.

If Wexford are to win the game then they need to be like that starving man at a dinner-table.

They’ll need the self-belief of an Eddie Coady, the hunger of a Noel Hickey, and the freshness of those rowers from Skibbereen.

Because if they don’t have all of those things and everything is equal between the two teams in those three areas, then Kilkenny’s superior hurling will win the day.

Wexford’s sweeper system is likely to make it a tight contest and keep them in the game, but ultimately I don’t think you can win a cut-throat championship match like this one by playing safe.

You have to take risks and go for the jugular. That’s what Kilkenny always do best.

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