The former young hurler of the year has been looking back at his own performances in recent games ahead of the start of the Championship
Eoin Cody was celebrating with Ballyhale Shamrocks after winning the All-Ireland club final back in March of this year, they had won their 5th County title in a row the previous October. This year has been a struggle for the county champions having lost players like Joey Holden, Colin Fennelly and Ronan Corcoran to travel commitments.
Out of their five league games they had won a single game only against Graigue Ballycallan and a draw to Erins Own and losses to Glenmore and Bennettsbridge left the team lying second from bottom in Group A before their last game against James Stephens. It was a brilliant game to be fair, Ballyhale started very well and a magnificent goal from TJ Reid saw the reigning champions take a two point lead into the break.
James Stephens started the second half brightly and thanks to a fortuitous goal from Luke Scanlon saw last years runners go into a six point lead, the Village were awarded a penalty in the second half and they decided to take the point and go seven points clear. Heading into the last 5-6 minutes of the game it looked like it would slip away but the Shamrocks are never finished till the final whistle is gone and came roaring back with three late goals to finish level, Cody himself finishing up with 2-5 getting man of the match.
Speaking to KLCR after the match, Cody said “I suppose it was a great game, probably looked like we weren’t going to get anything out of it in the last ten minutes, we dug deep, the league hasn’t been up to the standard that we want, we really talked about it during the week after last week. I looked at myself personally after my performances, they were a wake up call, even getting man of the match today is great cause I really put a lot of work in during the week to get things back right and now we’re all guns blazing now for championship hopefully”
“Our backs were against the wall, we probably knew we had to score goals, we have been in this situation one too many times, so we just went long with the ball and we started to get a bit of joy and obviously when you have TJ up there , he makes things happen and a few goals went our way thank god”
“Its probably a fair result looking at the game, if we won it probably would have been robbery again, it [draw] gives us a point we’re in the relegation zone and we know from here on in it’s knockout championship, there’s no more room for excuses, no more room for bad performances, no more room to drop points to lose games, we’ll take it as a positive, we’ll look at the negatives and try improve on them and drive on for the next two weeks”
Check out KCLR’s Kilkenny Hurling Podcast.
Each week Robbie Dowling and former Blacks and Whites manager Eddie Scally cast their eye over all the action from the weekend’s senior, intermediate, and junior league and championship games as well as looking ahead to the next round of action.
