Brian Cody looking for Kilkenny improvement ahead of this Sunday's league clash with Tipperary

Kilkenny were far from their fluent best but they still had enough to claim a three point victory over Antrim in the National League opener in a blustery UPMC Nowlan Park on Sunday afternoon.

In similar circumstances to the corresponding fixture a year ago, Antrim gave the Cats plenty of trouble and once again hit Kilkenny for three goals.

Kilkenny needed goalkeeper Darren Brennan to keep their noses in front late on when he saved from Donal Nugent and as well as that save a brace of goals from Martin Keoghan helped the Cats keep Antrim at bay.

Kilkenny manager Brian Cody wasn’t too impressed with his side’s display over the 70 minutes.

“We were very, very average overall. We were never really comfortable in the game. Antrim got an early goal. We took a long time to get back into the game. We kept going and we definitely improved in the second half.

“For the first half of the second half we were good. After that Antrim came back into it again. We won the game. That is the most important thing.

“We had to dig out the win, but you would expect nothing less. Any team Antrim meet will have to dig out a result”.

“Our main aim was to get a win and kickstart the league campaign and we did that”.

As well as lining out without the Ballyhale Shamrocks contingent who will face Ballygunner in the All-Ireland club final on Saturday, a couple of third level players were also missing including the likes of Niall Brassil and Cian Kenny.

“There’s a couple of lads playing Fitzgibbon Cup at the moment so we decided to play without a few of them today as we can’t overload lads.

“The Institute of Technology, Carlow game was unfortunately brought forward to Tuesday night and we just didn’t play those lads as they would only be running the risk of injury so we didn’t risk any of them.

“We’d hope to have them available for the Tipperary game so we’ll see how that goes”, Cody added.