'Sunday Tribune', 19 September 2004 Thirty-nine years ago at a football ground in a Lisbon suburb, one garrulous Scot forced his way into the dressing room to acknowledge the genius of a less talkative compatriot. Celtic had just won their European Cup and Bill Shankly, who was himself busy creating a legend a couple of hundred miles away from Glasgow, had come to shake Jock Stein's hand. "John, you're immortal now, " Shankly declared. It's not clear whether any of Brian Cody's fellow countymen expressed similar sentiments to him in the vicinity of the Croke Park dressing room some time after 5pm last Sunday. But if they didn't, they should have.

He ripped it up and started again. That was the magic in the web. Ripped up the formula, tarmacked over that demolition derby circuit of his and instead of returning to Plan A threw it in the bin. This was the 2004 final viewed from the other side of the curtain, and nothing about Cody's latest All Ireland-winning team was the same as about his previous All Ireland-winning teams. Apart from the silverware, obviously.

Where his first, that of 2000, was piled high with marquee names and silvery stickmen, this one was long on willing labourers. Where the 2002-03 version was a Swat cadre who kicked down front doors, this crowd used the windows. Where in the 2004 final Derek Lyng had a midfield clone in Ken Coogan, a Fitzgibbon Cup man of the tournament as a defender, here he had a complement in Cha Fitzpatrick, both a Feile na nGael man of the tournament as a midfielder and a Feile na nGael skills champion. And where last Sunday's forwards worked no harder than any of Cody's forward lines had worked in the past, they weren't so consumed with octopussing Cork to death as to neglect the task of embossing an address on the sliotar when they won it back. This was, by a distance, the sweetest, the most satisfying, the most signal of the four triumphs.

Much has been written about two of the game's emblematic moments. The first was the cameo where Sean Og O hAilpin was confronted by no fewer than four opponents in the 19th minute, the second James Ryall's classical old-Kilkenny flick to swish the sliotar away from the inrunning Jerry O'Connor in the second half. But we'll give you a third.

Nine minutes before the break, Richie Power won possession on the right wing, turned and switched the point of the attack to the diagonal, across the field to the left corner. There Aidan Fogarty coursed John Gardiner, whose slack clearance was seized on by Henry Shefflin and sent over the bar. Kilkenny's last score of the half arrived in broadly similar circumstances, Eddie Brennan eschewing the option of shooting from an angle in favour of turning back and laying the ball off, the move ending with Lyng pointing from Brian Murphy's spooned clearance. Again the significance lay as much in the change of fulcrum as it did in the pressure of the forwards on the backs. Kilkenny had come to harry Cork, yes. But they'd also come to hurl them.

Brian Cody, the man who once declared he "didn't do tactics", has sent out impeccably motivated teams before. He has never sent out a team as well coached or a team with so minutely calculated a gameplan. Mick Dempsey and Martin Fogarty, whose 2004 Kilkenny under-21s played thinking man's hurling against Galway in the All Ireland semi-final prior to winning the final by 21 points, were his colleagues on the journey to Damascus. One wonders who led whom.

Hindsight isn't required to declare that the signs of the county's return to the higher virtues were apparent literally from the opening day of the season. Against Laois at Nowlan Park on 19 February they not only hit 1-26, 1-17 of it from play, but moved the ball with care and imagination. It was only Laois? Perhaps, except that Kilkenny would go on to replicate the methodology again and again.

They drew with Limerick at the Gaelic Grounds in a game where both Eamonn Cregan and Tony Considine publicly commented on the disparity in stickwork and first touch between the sides. They twice murdered Tipperary in Thurles by dint of going around them rather than through them. In the second Tipp match, indeed, Tommy Walsh, that hitherto professional purveyor of brainless ball to his forwards, was blown for overcarrying after taking too much time trying to pick out the optimum delivery upfield. If this were a sin, it was the most commendable of sins.

To one opposition coach, Kilkenny were now playing the type of hurling they "should have been playing for years". Having demonstrated his flexibility in striking out for a new frontier, the only question that remained surrounded whether Cody would be strong enough to ensure the change of emphasis wasn't a passing fancy . . . and the strength of the man is the last thing you'd doubt about him. For his part he was less than enamoured of the Sunday Tribune's February contention that Kilkenny would "not be a pretty sight" this year but mysteriously failed to notice the assertion six weeks later that "in a complete reversion of everything we've seen from them in the past three years, Kilkenny have been using the ball with genuine purpose and imaginationf call it a championship straw in the wind". A winning manager's prerogative.

The switch of Fitzpatrick to midfield for the All Ireland quarter-final gave them an orchestrator out the field and was the final significant piece in the jigsaw. That Kilkenny weren't getting the credit they deserved for their performances, a point alluded to by Pat Spillane on the Sunday Game the night of the Clare game, was neither here nor there; faint praise is a natural byproduct when one has already set the bar high for oneself. But their feat in breaking the 20-point barrier four times this summer offered ample grounds for believing they wouldn't be outpointed last Sunday.

One final challenge was left, that of arriving pitch-perfect at Croke Park. In contrast to 2004, when they were taking lumps out of one another in training eight days before the final, the last heavy physical session took place the Monday week beforehand. Comprehensive recovery sessions were an article of faith all through the season. For the first time in Kilkenny's last three appearances in the final, neither John Power nor anyone else could legitimately complain about overtraining. Ripeness is all.

After all of which, the inability of some natives to honour the prophet endures and probably always will. "This proves Cody is not a bad manager, " one man was heard to declare in a John Street premises on Monday. Four McCarthy Cup triumphs in eight years, 15 major final victories in 17 appearances: hmm, only not bad? Cody had talented players, yes. But the players had Cody. Though Fr Tommy Maher remains the most significant Kilkenny hurling figure of the last half-century, he now has a wingman.

A wingman who isn't finished winning All Irelands; certainly not finished trying to win them, at any rate. Even allowing for the latter-day fetish for anointing every new champions a potential three-in-a-row proposition, Kilkenny, with Michael Fennelly, Kieran Joyce, John Dalton, TJ Reid and Michael Rice . . . this year's unlucky man . . . waiting in the wings, ought to be a stronger side in two years' time. Aidan Fogarty's achievement last Sunday after two seasons spent warming the bench, moreover, offers a candle of hope to the likes of Willie O'Dwyer, man of the match in the 2004 All Ireland under-21 final but hovering close to the cracks in the interim.

Brian, you're immortal now.

emcevoy@tribune. ie