Richie Power: Henry Shefflin will definitely manage Kilkenny one day
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Despite a trophyless three years in charge of Galway, Richie Power still expects Henry Shefflin to one day hold the title of Kilkenny manager.
After winning all that was to be won on the club scene with Ballyhale Shamrocks, Shefflin’s first foray into inter-county management was not a successful one.
Three years in Galway delivered two All-Ireland semi-final defeats to Limerick, two Leinster final defeats to his native Kilkenny, and a failure this season gone to even emerge from the Leinster round-robin. The latter proved to be his last chapter out west.
Although his stock is none the higher for his time in maroon, Richie Power is confident his former teammate will still come to hold the Kilkenny reins at some point down the road.
“Oh absolutely, I definitely think we will see it. It could be five years, it could be 10 years down the line, you just don’t know,” Power said of Shefflin one day managing Kilkenny.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for him in Galway. People will probably point that it wasn’t a successful period and, personally, with the amount of underage success Galway have had, for them not to turn that into senior success, for me it’s a bit of a mystery and I don’t think that should completely fall back on a manager either.
“I think it's a case that some of the players maybe just didn’t train on and collectively as a group, the players just weren’t good enough and they weren’t there. Like they had Limerick on the ropes probably two of the years that Henry was there and couldn’t get over the line.
“I know the first thing people will do, they’ll turn back and they’ll blame management, they’ll blame tactics, and they’ll blame this and they’ll blame that, but you always have to look at the players and I just don’t think that the personnel was there in Galway to be good enough to win an All-Ireland.”
The job of Kilkenny manager currently sits with another of Power’s old teammates, Derek Lyng. His job in 2025 is to end the county’s 10-year wait for a return Noreside of Liam MacCarthy. Should their fallow spell extend beyond 2025, it would go down as the longest in Kilkenny hurling history.
What concerns Power more, though, is that the county hasn't won a minor All-Ireland since 2014 and has won only one U20 - 2022 - in the past 16 years.
“They’re probably the two standout statistics from a Kilkenny perspective because I can remember when I was playing minor and U21, obviously we were lucky to come with a brilliant team at the time, but we were winning minor All-Irelands and that was progressing to win U21s and then a lot of the U21 team was making the step up to senior.
"So I think that’s where we as a county need to probably concentrate on and try and bridge that gap and break those two statistics.
“If Kilkenny are lucky enough to get to a Leinster senior final (in 2025), win a Leinster final, they’re 70 minutes from an All-Ireland again. This year, we saw they were one puck away from being in an All-Ireland, and Cork overturning Limerick the following day, you just don’t know what way a final would have gone between Kilkenny and Cork.
"So it just proves that they’re not a million miles away. We always feel that in Kilkenny and this group of players are going to be no different.”
Part of and central to that 2025 effort will be 37-year-old TJ Reid, what will be his 19th season in black and amber. Power’s preference would be for Reid to become a permanent fixture in the inside line next season, rather than once again having him operating out around and beyond the ’45.
“He’s probably after losing a little bit of pace in relation to trying to get away from a player, but I still think someone of TJ’s calibre, with his hurling brain, his aerial ability, his hurling ability, I still think he’s good enough to get away with all of that in circumstances.
“He’s 37, he has a huge amount of miles on the clock when you take in the Shamrocks’ achievements on top of Kilkenny, so I wouldn’t expect TJ to be playing in a half-forward line and maybe having to do all the dirty work around the middle third.
"I genuinely think we’d get more from him and more benefit from him in a full-forward line and having that threat closer to goal.”