Underage success the key to return to top insists Kilkenny legend

The clock is ticking towards the 10th anniversary since Kilkenny’s last All-Ireland title and for former player Richie Power, the lack of success at underage level in that same time is a huge factor.

“You wouldn’t have thought that we’d go this long without winning another one but I suppose there have been a few signs as to why as we haven’t won an All-Ireland minor title since 2014 and only one under-20 since 2008. That’s probably the worrying stat from a Kilkenny perspective.

“We’d opportunities to win a minor and an under-20 this year and we unfortunately couldn’t take it but all we can do as a county is put the right processes in place and hope that a couple of players will make the breakthrough.

“The big thing for me is that we haven’t seen anyone from the under-20 team that won the All-Ireland in 2022 progress onto the team and while there is a few on the panel, nobody is really pushing onto the starting 15,” Power said when speaking at the launch of the 24th annual Circet All-Ireland GAA Golf Challenge.

Power feels the introduction of Michael Fennelly as Performance Lead with Kilkenny GAA is a big step forward in trying to bring back the glory days.

“I think we took our eye off the ball a bit at underage when we were successful at senior level so I think it’s somewhere we need to get back to,” he continued.

“Getting back into the primary schools is important and everyone talks about St Kieran’s College being a nursery for Kilkenny hurling but there’s still brilliant hurlers in Kilkenny CBS, Ballyhale, Johnstown and so on so you have to cast the net wide and Michael (Fennelly) is trying to put the process in place to do that but we know it’s going to take time.”

Looking ahead to Sunday, the Carrickshock man doesn’t think there will be much in it between Kilkenny and Tipperary.

“In fairness to Kilkenny they’ve been in semi-finals and finals in the last few years,” he said. “Tipperary are definitely coming as they’ve won All-Irelands at underage level and found a few players and they definitely won’t fear Kilkenny going into Croke Park. I think it’s a game that could go either way really.”