'If any Munster team come into Leinster, they'd find it very tough' - John Donnelly
TWO YEARS AGO, the good people of Thomastown had to cast their eyes back to 1946 when they won their sole Kilkenny senior hurling championship, while since the turn of the century, Ballyhale just five miles down the road established themselves as one of the most successful clubs in the country.
But under manager Noel Doherty they won county, provincial and All-Ireland titles at intermediate level in 2023-24, before going straight into senior level and walloping reigning county champions O’Loughlin Gaels in the final.
While winning their second county title is obviously a triumph that belongs to the whole community, there is a very individual honour that comes as a fringe benefit in that they get to nominate the county captain thereafter.
Or at least, that is the system as still pertains in Kerry football and Kilkenny hurling, the last bastions of this system.
For Thomastown, it meant they could nominate their own John Donnelly as county captain, though they were slow in getting off the mark, as Donnelly explains.
“I think the way it worked, I nearly just assumed like it would be me because I was the first in here, I suppose,” he says.
“Derek (Lyng, Kilkenny manager) rang me first and he said he wasn’t actually hearing anything from Thomastown, so I was like… ‘Right!’
“But then Fiona (Cotter, club secretary) text me then she said, we’d like to ask you to be captain and, yeah, I took it and that was it.”
Thomastown’s Peter McDonald’s is also the team vice-captain.
“So it’s a brilliant time for the club and obviously I’m living it now but I probably won’t realise how special it was until it’s finished,” says Donnelly.
“It’s so intense when you’re living it. You kind of just have to roll with it, like. You don’t really fully appreciate it.”
As the Cats get ready to start their Leinster six-in-a-row bid with a home game against Galway today (Saturday, UPMC Nowlan Park, 3.45pm), Donnelly has had to take more of a leadership role in the wake of a trio of retirements with Cillian Buckley, Conor Fogarty and Walter Walsh all closing the door on their county careers.
“I suppose with Conor like, if there was one player I could have picked to learn stuff from, probably would have been him, just in terms of how you train and how you prepare and how you look after yourself and how you conduct yourself as a Kilkenny hurler,” says Donnelly.
“There was never any baggage with him. There was just no messing, there was no rubbish like with him and he was just a great lad to look up to.”
With Walsh, it was the easy banter and repartee he would establish with newcomers just coming into the dressing room, extracting stories about college life and making them feel more comfortable.
Buckley was quieter, Donnelly notes, but what he took from him was a burning devotion to Kilkenny. Even when injuries pot-holed the last few years of his career, he never sulked and always set the example.
There’s little sense of talking of a post-Cody era, but when his reign was so long, the shadow takes a while to retreat.
“When you lose Brian after the All-Ireland in ’22… Like his name in itself, he done so much in my career, so when he steps away there’s obviously going to be a change and a different feeling.
“But Derek’s brought new energy and he’s brought in a lot of his U20 team that won the All-Ireland against Limerick. So, I suppose new lads like that just change the dynamic and change the energy as well, which is a really positive thing as well.”
Lyng has still to become a made man in Kilkenny by managing the side to a Liam MacCarthy. Last summer’s second half showing against Clare meant they were squeezed out by the eventual champions.
A few weeks later, Donnelly decided to take a trip up to the final itself along with a few friends from his club. While they loved the big day out, he said little and privately stewed in his own disappointment at not being out there.
“It was a great day in terms of like seeing what an All-Ireland final looks like as a spectator, but once the match starts, once we kind of got to Dublin, you see the supporters there, you’re kind of like, ‘Jeez, this is tough now.’ The boys in the club loved it.
“I obviously got on with it now but it was tough, yeah. Look Clare bet us on the day, we can have no complaints. They were the better team and they were a better team the day of the All-Ireland as well, so fair play to them.”
Onwards into Leinster. Does he, like so many others in the eastern province, get a little sick of the Munster counties licking themselves over the health of their own provincial championship?
“Leinster is like incredibly tough, and I think if any Munster team come into Leinster, they’d find it very tough as well, and the matches we have to play over the next few weeks, they’ll take all our energy to get wins there,” he says
“In terms of, I suppose what the media say, we don’t really look at it, to be honest. I suppose all our energy goes into how we can play and how we can perform, we don’t really have the time or the energy to be thinking, are these lads in Munster better than us or anything like that?
“It’s just focused on how good we can be really.”
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