The World Cup was in full swing when Offaly and Kilkenny faced off in the 1998 Leinster hurling final.
And, for the first quarter, the scoreboard rhymed with many of those over in France as the sides stood at one goal each.
John Troy nipped in for the opener for Offaly in the sixth minute and Charlie Carter replied instantly. Then followed a spree of wides, poor striking and disjointed play from both sides before Offaly’s Johnny Dooley finally hit the game’s first point in the 17th minute, not that that sparked an outbreak of quality hurling.
There was little between the teams until DJ Carey twice found the net from 20-metre frees in the second half and Kilkenny won 3-10 to 1-11 in the end - an aggregate of just 25 scores registered.
It was the lowest in a Leinster final for 16 years and it hasn’t been matched since, with the combined tally of scores dropping below 34 only once in the intervening 25 years.
The back door had been opened for the first time the previous year as two Munster teams contested the All-Ireland final and it seemed a likely prospect again on the back of the worst Leinster final in years.
The Offaly manager, Michael ‘Babs’ Keating, clearly thought so, intimating as much to his Kilkenny counterpart, Kevin Fennelly, on the final whistle. But Fennelly wasn’t so downbeat.
He recalls: “I remember Babs saying to me after the match, he said, ‘Look, those two teams will win no All-Ireland anyway’ and I just said, ‘Keep your powder dry, Babs, we could be meeting in the All-Ireland’ and Babs kind of disagreed with me.
“I remember he was very bullish about saying that these two teams would beat no one, basically.”
Keating’s comments to the media minutes later, where he was scathing of his players, describing them as “sheep in a heap”, precipitated his departure within days.
But Fennelly had delivered Kilkenny’s first Leinster title in five years and, unknowingly, had instigated the longest spell of dominance that the province has seen.
Leinster titles wasn’t the currency that he was trading in, however. When he sat in front of the interview committee for the Kilkenny job the previous autumn, they looked twice at him when he talked about winning an All-Ireland the following year.
“I was always of the opinion that Kilkenny could be in every All-Ireland because I believe that Kilkenny always have the players and they were never short of hurlers.
“Sometimes we’re our own biggest critics but you could never underestimate Kilkenny and I was surprised at the attitude in the county that we wouldn’t win an All-Ireland for five years. I said we could win three out of the five if we just got going.”
That first one proved to be elusive, however. The drawn-out nature of the Championship then meant that Kilkeny faced a six-week lay-off before facing a fancied Waterford in the All-Ireland a semi-final, another low-scoring encounter that they edged by a point. It was another four weeks to the final.
Meanwhile, Offaly had installed a new manager in Michael Bond, whose methods found favour with the players. They beat Antrim and then entered the three-game saga with Clare from which they emerged a very different animal to that which had been beaten tamely in the Leinster final, making good on Fennelly’s prediction to Keating.
“I told the lads to go shout for Clare the third day. I said, ‘Offaly will beat us, they’re getting better, Clare will be getting tired’. Clare were the best team, I reckoned, in the country at the time but they were getting that bit older and Offaly caught them.”
So it proved, as Offaly stormed to what remains their last All-Ireland, but there was satisfaction in Kilkenny that Fennelly had made progress and he was raring to go for another year. Until, suddenly, he wasn’t.
“The county board were very happy with the team and I went in just to take the job and I asked a question of the county board that night and they didn’t give me the answer I wanted.
“So I basically said, ‘Ok, lads, it’s someone else’s job so’. I’m never going to discuss what that was but people often wondered what it was and some people knew but it didn’t suit me, certain things weren’t suiting me.
“I like everyone to be giving me 100% and I like everything to be working ok but I felt that it wasn’t and I felt it was going to come to a head and I decided, ‘No, this is it’.
“Maybe next morning I said, ‘What the f**k are you doing Kevin?’ but it was done then and that’s it. Ah, I didn’t regret it, like, to be honest. Not too much anyway.”
Brian Cody, Fennelly’s first cousin, was duly appointed, though there was no trading of notes despite the familial connection.
“We’d have been in different circles. I get on fine with Brian, always did, but we would never have consulted with each other on picking teams or going for the job or anything that way. Not at any stage, no.”
After another near miss in 1999, Cody tapped into a level of success that even Fennelly wouldn’t have imagined for Kilkenny, until finally relinquishing the role after last year’s All-Ireland final.
But for Cody’s longevity, perhaps the post might have presented itself to Fennelly again but he insists: “I don’t think you should get this job again if you give it up and I don’t have a problem with that.
“I got my chance and I pulled out of it after a year so that’s my problem. No, I don’t have any hang-ups about being offered the job again, no. I don’t blame anyone for that only myself, to be honest about it.”
So, tomorrow, Derek Lyng will be the first manager other than Cody to lead a Kilkenny team in a Leinster final since Fennelly in 1998.
And while he points to last year’s gallant effort against Limerick to support his theory that Kilkenny can always contend strongly, his optimism around the team’s prospects isn’t as plentiful as would usually be the case.
“Derek won the under-20 last year with a team that I thought wasn’t good enough to win an All-Ireland and did very well to win it. He deserves his run at it.
“No matter who got the job after Brian they were going to be under pressure because not alone that, we hadn’t won an All-Ireland in the last six seasons which is a long time in Kilkenny so he’s come in at a bad time.
“Expectations are probably not as high as they would have been. I don’t think Kilkenny people in general are expecting to win the All-Ireland this year, even though they nearly won it last year.
“I think in general people know that we’re not as good as we were years ago and this team will struggle to win the All-Ireland.”
