Brian Kennedy of St. Lachtain's pictured ahead of the AIB All-Ireland Club Junior Hurling Championship Final against Russell Rovers.
By John Harrington
Brian Kennedy has had an eventful few months.
Last October he married his partner Michelle Graham and a couple of weeks later was man of the match as St. Lachtain’s defeated Windgap in the Kilkenny Junior Hurling Championship Final.
He was a key figure too in St. Lachtain’s successful Leinster campaign before he and Michelle jetted off to Vietnam for their honeymoon.
That meant missing the All-Ireland semi-final clash with Easkey and having to endure a nervy couple of hours checking score updates, but he returned home with an All-Ireland Final to look forward to.
“It's been a brilliant time, I'm after having a great few weeks with the wedding, the county final and what's followed it, the honeymoon and now we have an All-Ireland Final,” says Kennedy “It's been a brilliant few months for myself personally.
“I probably thought all of the good days that I would have were at the start of my career because we haven't had too many good days since, but this year has been brilliant. Everybody has really bought into our season and what the boys have been saying all year.”
It’s certainly true that Kennedy had some great days early on in his career.
Just a few weeks after turning 18, he was part of the St. Lachtain’s team that defeated St. Gall’s in the AIB All-Ireland Intermediate Club Hurling Final and later that year he won an All-Ireland minor championship with Kilkenny.
He captained the Kilkenny U21s in 2013 and in 2014 and 2015 was part of the Kilkenny senior hurling panel that won back-to-back All-Ireland titles.
“It was a brilliant time,” says Kennedy. “It was always an aspiration of mine to get onto the Kilkenny senior panel and try to work my way into the team some way.
“It was just class going in to training with men like Tommy Walsh, JJ Delaney, Henry Shefflin and those boys. Fellas you would have been looking at for nearly 10 years before that and then you're going in training with them and going to matches with them and having dinner after training with them.
“That was the stuff of dreams for me. Just a class few years.”
Brian Kennedy, Kilkenny, in action against Kieran Bergin, Tipperary. 2014 Allianz Hurling League, Division 1A, Round 2, Kilkenny v Tipperary, Nowlan Park, Kilkenny. Picture credit: Pat Murphy / SPORTSFILE
Until this season, he’s had more bad days than good with St. Lachtain’s since they won that 2010 All-Ireland title.
They were relegated back to the intermediate grade after just one year of senior championship hurling, and, try as they might, couldn’t climb back up the rung again.
They lost a series of Intermediate semi-finals and were beaten in an Intermediate final in 2021 by Glenmore before. That was disappointing, but being relegated the following year to the Junior grade was much worse. The club found itself at a cross-roads.
“We were so mad to get up senior so when we got relegated down to Junior we were saying what the hell is going on here,” recalls Kennedy.
“It was a tough place to be in. There was a lot of soul-searching I suppose. A lot of lads were even maybe contemplating stepping away. But, look, thankfully the panel stuck together.
“We gave it a good rattle last year, reaching the Junior Final and falling just short at the final hurdle, but Tullogher were a class team and we all saw what they did afterwards.
“We all put on another big push this year. For myself, it's not like I have another 10 years left playing with Freshford and you obviously want to make sure that the younger lads like Cathal Hickey, Cathal O'Leary, Mark Donnelly, those boys, aren't playing junior for the rest of their lives.
“There was a big push by a lot the older lads and then all the younger lads backboned it to drive it on further. We're delighted to get back up Intermediate because that's where we'd see ourselves as a club. It's not arrogance, I just think we've been intermediate for so long and getting to all those semi-finals and a final, we wouldn't like to see ourselves as a yo-yo team or a junior team. The minimum standard for us would be to hurling intermediate in Kilkenny.”
St Lachtain's players and their supporters celebrate after victory over Windgap in the Kilkenny Junior Hurling Championship Final.
Kilkenny teams have dominated the All-Ireland Junior Club Hurling Championship since it’s inception, winning 11 of the 20 finals to date, and St. Lachtain’s look like another very talented team off the conveyor belt.
Kennedy is the leader in a defence that gives little away, and their attack features a plethora of dangerous forwards like James Maher, Shane Donnelly, Liam Hickey, and Cathal O’Leary.
You’d imagine the wide expanses of Croke Park will suit their brand of hurling too, but Kennedy insists they’re taking nothing for granted against Cork and Munster champions, Russell Rovers, who themselves have looked like a slick outfit on the way to this final.
“We don't know what to expect from Russell Rovers but we do know that they're a fairly serious team,” says Kennedy. “They've players like Ciarán Sheehan and Brian Hartnett who are good forwards and they're solid at the back as well.
“Then you look at the man that's over them, Donal Óg Cusack, he has huge pedigree in the game. We all know how much he thinks about the game from his time on the Sunday Game. They'll probably throw something at us we maybe haven't faced before, we don't know.
“All we know is that they're a fairly serious outfit by all accounts. We know we'll have to be really on it going in against them on Sunday.
“Croke Park is going to make conditions completely different to what we've been playing for the last three months. It's going to be a lot more open and free-flowing, I'd imagine.
“We want to get good quick ball into the boys inside. We know we have good forwards, boys that are well able to score, the likes of James Maher, Shane Donnelly, Cathal O'Leary. We've six forwards who are all well able to score and we'd be confident in any of them that if we give them a chance they'll be able to take it.”
