ASSESSMENT: Keith Duggansays there was nothing ordinary about yesterday as an exceptional Kilkenny team gave a display of relentless brilliance

WHAT A sight, in the end, as the Cats Nation celebrated in the mellow sunshine and their captain, James Fitzpatrick, gave a speech that invoked the enduring truth that, where Kilkenny hurling is concerned, the past is never forgotten and the future is never left to chance.

On normal All-Ireland-winning years, the Kilkenny people are modest in their conduct and considered in their celebrations.

But there was nothing ordinary about yesterday. It wasn't simply that this Kilkenny team had achieved the three-in-a-row but that they had done so by delivering a performance that has already acquired the sheen of infinite radiance.

"The day of days," Brian Cody called it, and it was just that, a Eureka moment for the enigmatic man from the Marble City whose team had, on the day when it was to be judged against history, put on a show that was, for long periods, so unstoppably brilliant that it was simultaneously chilling and thrilling.

Afterwards, the Kilkenny public chaired Brian Cody off the field and they chanted his name in recognition that some new peak had been scaled, that even those hurling historians who could draw on a memory bank of 50 years had seen something completely new and unprecedented here.

The afternoon was warm and the sky was blue and the scoreboard read 3-30 to 1-13 and Kilkenny were champions for the third year running. It was a day of such strange magic and an absolute validation of Kilkenny supremacy that it would have been no surprise had the sky been filled with a black and amber legend: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.

For the second year running, Kilkenny had claimed the MacCarthy Cup with a kind of wrathful ease, and yesterday's display was so overwhelming that, in comparison, last year's final against Limerick could have been revised as a close-run thriller.

Earlier in the afternoon, the Kilkenny minors had broken Galway hearts with a polished and convincing closing 10 minutes of hurling that saw them lift the first silver of the day. It was half past five in the evening when Brian Hogan, the Kilkenny centre back, finally confirmed that the Cats' underage side had also won: the senior team were so locked into their own world that nothing really intruded on their mindset.

But with the senior and minor titles secured and the intermediate All-Ireland bagged last week, the under-21 team can complete the clean sweep next Sunday against Tipperary.

For Kilkenny, those successes are a measure of the respect they have for the game, and for hurling men in other counties they are further proof of the fact that these black and amber men are not going to tire of these days.

Three-in-a-row is not enough. Nothing is enough. People keep asking Brian Cody how and why and the flush-faced man from the Village club keeps insisting that there is no secret.

But perhaps Eddie Brennan touched upon it when he described himself and his colleagues as feeling "privileged" just to wear the county colours and to play on the senior team. Perhaps it is the relentless pursuit of success through hurling excellence that keeps this team so sharp and engaged year in and year out, that knowledge that there is a shadow cast waiting to take over, to come in and carve out their own role in this grand, enduring story.

"Privileged" was the word Eoin Larkin chose too when he tried to explain why this team demands more from itself with each season.

"Hurling is a funny game, you just have to keep going and going. Brian keeps drilling into us that it is a 70-minute game and that anything can happen.

"We are privileged, I suppose, that we have a chance to wear the black and amber and we treat that with huge respect. You just have to have the hunger. Everyone in that dressingroom wants to win as much as they can. You see the under-21 and minor teams achieving and they are going to be coming through. It is up to you to keep your place."

Sentiment rarely comes into it. But here, with the All-Ireland probably secured from the moment Brennan struck demonically for Kilkenny's second goal, the champions had the luxury of pausing to acknowledge one of their own, the substitute goalkeeper James McGarry.

The long, rich applause that followed the Bennettsbridge man on to the field a year after his life and those of his extended family were afflicted with the worst tragedy imaginable was both a salute to McGarry's courage and a recognition that these mellow September afternoons in Croke Park are as good as it gets.

And if there was a slight sting to that perfect closing scene, when a speculative Waterford shot spun into the net off McGarry's hurley, it hardly mattered. The rare mistakes that the Kilkenny men made just served to illuminate their long periods of absolute flawlessness.

And through that relentless maelstrom of brilliance, all hearts went out to the Waterford players on the field. What team in Ireland would have traded places with them after 15 minutes? By then, it was clear that Kilkenny were steadily gathering voice that would culminate in the grand operatic notes of the last 18 minutes of the half, when the All-Ireland was no longer a contest or even a match, but rather an unforgettable portrait of the best trying to explore where they can take this game of theirs.