TJ
By John Harrington
TJ Reid has hailed his Kilkenny team-mate Richie Hogan for his second-half heroics in Sunday’s Leinster Hurling Final against Galway.
The reigning All-Ireland Champions trailed by three points at half-time, but Hogan’s introduction for the second-half energised them.He hit five points from play as Kilkenny came from behind to win comfortably in the end by 1-26 to 0-22.
“You saw Richie Hogan, he was probably mad to start the game but he had no game time done at all,” said Reid. “Came on at half-time, you saw what he done. He was hungry. He was out of action for last number of weeks so the hunger was there. He drove the whole thing on.
“He was very agitated. I remember I scored a point and he was abusing me because I wouldn’t pass him the ball. Mad to get on ball. He wanted every ball in on top of him. He was just hungry for it. Great to have Richie back. Again, John Power came on, done very well. So the two subs made a big impact.”
Kilkenny were out-hurled for most of the first half and did well to only be three-points in arrears by the break. Reid revealed there was a call to arms in their dressing-room at half-time.
“A few words said at half-time,” he said. It was a bit like the All-Ireland Final last year, we let Galway play the game on their terms. In the first half we didn’t get going. Didn’t get out of the traps. Playing second fiddle to Galway.
“The big thing is we didn’t panic. That was said at half-time, 'Don’t panic. Even if Galway get a goal after half-time, it’s a long 37 minutes. Anything can happen'.
“We were lucky we had the opportunity to reflect on things at half-time. If it was a training session, Brian would have pulled us in after five or 10 minutes and said, “that standard isn’t good enough”. And the standard wasn’t good enough.
“The second half we were able to take a look at ourselves. Even myself, I knew my performance wasn’t good enough. Every individual had the same gut feeling. Everybody rose their game an extra 20, 30 per cent.
“But, look, we can’t not be performing in the first half and then be performing in the second and playing. It’s not going to happen every time. We’ll have to work on that, make sure we get a good start, starting dominating teams from start to finish.”
Richie Hogan is back from injury and included on the Kilkenny bench for their match against Antrim.
Kilkenny have now won 15 of 18 Leinster Championships played during the Brian Cody era. They have the province in a strangle-hold, but Reid insists it remains a tough competition to win.
“I suppose they be giving out that the games are not as competitive as they used to be,” he said. “A lot of people are giving out about that. It’s a bit like, talking about Dublin, the football, Dublin are not getting the competitive games, so they be worrying about if they get to an All-Ireland semi-final if they met a good competitive team are they able to push on.
“For ourselves, you look at Leinster, it’s very tough so it is, we had a few setbacks in a few years there, but sometimes you lose a game in Leinster is a good thing because it gives you a wake-up call. Sometimes when you are winning you think you are going well, you think everything’s rosy, the whole thing, and then one day bang, you are hit with an almighty team with Galway there in 2012.
“They hit us with an almighty fight and we weren’t able to bounce back. We came back that year and beat them, so at times it’s good to lose a game. It gives you an insight on what’s going on and what needs to be improved.
“The games are competitive. We had a good game against Dublin, and a good competitive game against Galway. Things didn’t go well in the first half. Lucky enough we were able to change it at half time.”
