LOCKER ROOM: In the course of one unforgettable afternoon, Tipperary ensure Cody's imperious side become yesterday's men

THERE IS a tunnel which runs under the Hogan Stand in Croke Park, and at one side of the tunnel are the dresssingrooms which players use and at the other side are lifts and the entrance to the players’ lounge. The broad passageway in between is used to park the buses which the teams arrive on and for the cars of a few GAA dignitaries.

The post-match press conferencing having become so mind-numbing in Croker it has become a habit for the media to gather around the team buses and near the entrance to the players’ lounge, hoping to cadge the odd interesting quote from a player who might have had a pivotal role in the game but who has not been brought to the press conference.

Yesterday, about an hour after the final whistle, a couple of dozen media and a large-ish group of hangers-on wrapped in blue and gold were gathered in a large semi-circle beside the Tipp bus. To a casual onlooker, it might have appeared as if we were offering some form of respectful worship to the vehicle but, in reality, we were preparing for that moment when an unsuspecting player marched around from the front of the bus and all 36 of us would raise our eyebrows as if we just happened to be passing and would be delighted to talk to him, if he insisted.

And while we waited and stared at the bus a tall, red-haired man passed behind us on crutches. He made his way upstairs towards the players’ lounge and at the top of the stairs turned and looked down impassively at our throng. Henry Shefflin was the story of this final until shortly after 3.40 yesterday. An hour after Tipp became champions he was forgotten. He hurried on in case he would be witness to us oozing over Lar Corbett in an orgy of journalistic unctuousness.

Sport is sport and Henry Shefflin has sufficient competitiveness in him to know that the winners take all the spoils – even the more dubious spoils like media attention.

And yet the ending is so cruel and harsh and sudden it has to hurt.

Brian Cody knows so much and says so little that when it comes to communicating with the media it would be easier if he just ticked off the boxes beside various Codyisms as they applied to the situation at hand.

Savage player. Tick.

Savage team. Tick.

Great place to be. Tick.

Great game of hurling. Tick.

Yesterday however we experienced the novel sight of Brian Cody hosting us at a losers’ press conference. The last time Kilkenny lost a big game in Croke Park the curse of the banal press conference had yet to be invented and we got some fine spontaneous reaction from emotive players.

Spontaneity is out of fashion (presumably the insurance companies don’t like it) these days so, about half an hour after the game ended, Cody came to the airless little theatre, sat down and issued a loopy grin as he waited for the first of us to ask how it felt.

How it felt? The question is a cardinal journalistic sin which should be barred from sports reporting. How it felt? A lazy invitation to spoofing and evasion. Still, this is Cody. Being the man he is, he had only just walked into the whooping and hollering Tipperary dressingroom and told them to treasure what they had because they deserved what they had. His words had been listened to in a pure silence freighted with respect and awe. And now he was among us. From the sublime to the fourth estate.

Sure enough, we couldn’t help ourselves and we asked the question, “ehm how does it feel Brian”. His answer, as usual, was brief and offered no hostages to fortune but it left the rest of us wondering. How exactly did it feel?

At the final whistle, and indeed in the minutes leading up to it, Cody looked like a man in shock as he patrolled the sideline trying to will the ball into the Tipperary net. He said himself afterwards that he didn’t stop believing his team could get this match under their control until they went past the moment when it was an impossible task.

Cody would deny it vehemently but there has to be a romantic streak in him, a side of him given to daydreaming when he does the gardening on a summer evening or glances over the attendance sheets in his office as principal at the local primary school. There had to be a corner of his great pragmatic brain which gave itself up to wondering what five-in- a-row would be like. He would have tried to exorcise the thought, to chase it away but the daydream would whisper to him about immortality and telling his grandchildren and arriving at the holy grail of full sporting fulfilment.

And now this. His side not torn apart by any means but suffering from a scoreline which will go into the record books, baldly suggesting that Kilkenny had been torn apart. His side’s talisman, the beloved Henry Shefflin was on crutches, ghosting pasty thickets of hacks as if he were transparent.

The image of a ghost is a useful one because yesterday Kilkenny, the greatest champions we have known passed from one existence to another. Since 2005 they have been on this epic journey together. One match won. Two matches won. And so on. A first All-Ireland. A second. Is that history beckoning?

And it ended yesterday in one thunderstorm. For Cody and every player there is a little death there. The evenings will be empty and the days’ vacant moments won will be filled with dreams or plans.

Players talk endlessly about the sacrifice they make, how much they pay. When it ends though, they miss it like they would miss a limb. The team still feels part of them. But with no games to play and no dreams to dream the team no longer exists. Kilkenny were the four-in-a-row team.

Today they are a glorious part of history. But history. When next they play they will be a different team with different dreams. You can’t jump into the same river twice.

“I’m as proud of the team today as I was this time last year,” said Cody as he sought to put words on it. “It is about spirit and keeping on, keeping going, we had to keep going and we kept going.”

They will keep going. Hurling in Kilkenny is too woven into the culture for them not to, but there may never be another era like it nor a sharper reminder of how quickly and painfully it ends.

Sport is sport said Brian. Usually it’s not however. Usually it’s packaged and sanitised and managed and spoiled by money and agents and television. Yesterday though sport was sport and whether you laughed or you cried you felt it in your heart and gut.

Brian Cody left the room. Liam Sheedy entered immediately and sat into the same seat. “How’ye lads,” said Liam Sheedy as he settled himself. “It’s a great old feeling lads! All the doubting Thomases sit at the back now. Go on and sit up at the back lads!” His grin lit the place up. To the victor the best lines. You had to laugh along. Sport is sport is sport.