All-Ireland SHC Quarter finals: In the aftermath, no matter what the outcome, Brian Cody is usually as cool and composed a manager the media are likely to find. Never reveals his hand. Just provides the sound bites and retreats to the dressingroom.

Saturday evening was different. A question about whether the contest hinged on Kilkenny brilliance or Galway inconsistency annoyed him like flies on an elephant. He waved his trunk at us.

"No idea. It's not my job to figure that out. It's yours, so I dunno. I'm very happy if we were very poor."

The revival? "It can go like that. We went a man down as well and there was a massive wind. You don't sustain that but I'm glad, lads, you thought we were brutal there again. But I'd tell you one thing - I'd hate to have you as the manager. You have some high bloody standards, I'll tell you that much.

"I mean that. How many of ye ever hurled? I don't know how many of ye ever played but it is tough out there you know."

On the calamitous end-game Cody noted: "It went crazy with 20 minutes to go really. At half-time we were in good shape and 15 minutes into the second half we were tipping over some good scores. It went mad then. Derek (Lyng) getting sent off, obviously, and they completely swarmed forward. That was no surprise from a very good team like Galway who were in the All-Ireland final. They beat us well last year. They were not going to come up and not play well at all - and they would have been very disappointed in the first half - so they played out of their skins for that last 20 minutes. The pressure was savage, obviously, on our team with a man down as well."

He finally lost all patience. "There was some outstanding hurling out there tonight. Some phenomenal scores. Some brilliant defending. Outstanding excitement. Everyone got their money's worth except the boys in front of me who got in for nothing and got paid for it. Good luck!"

The grim reality of the championship became evident in conversation with Conor Hayes. His role as Galway manager will come under scrutiny in the coming weeks as the county board, and eventually the club delegates, review the current structure.

Hayes admitted the age-old problem for Galway remains the lack of consistent high-level hurling before the business end of the championship arrives. He cited a failure to reach the latter stages of the league and defeat to Waterford in the qualifiers as the main reasons for failure to build on last year's All-Ireland final appearance.

"We have to live with the structure of the championship because we are not going into Leinster so we will just have to improve ourselves. That's a problem of our own making. If we were in Leinster we would have probably played three or four games and against Kilkenny or Cork we would be in a better state."