- A fascinating conversation during Brian Hogan's victory speech between Pauric Maher, Conor O'Mahony and Paul Curran. They were hardly paying any attention to any of the formalities taking place in front of them and were instead dejectedly dissecting what had just taken place. To have been able to eavesdrop on that talk. They're spine of the team and O'Mahony had been strangely taken off. My guess was they were talking about the failure of Declan Ryan's tactics but I was 200 metres away.
- A sly Brian Cody wink. As Brian Hogan was toasting his manager, Cody did his best to wear his humble face, but as a roar of applause went up for him, someone in the crowd caught his eye and he gave a sly wink and head-nod combo, as if saying 'I knew it all along'. Cody is the greatest manager hurling history and it must have been some struggle to lift Kilkenny from the doubt and depression that followed last year's loss. Still, on a victorious All-Ireland Sunday day, he always strikes me as the most smug man in Ireland. At the final whistle, he flung his arms to heaven as if he were Job and God had finally accepted him back into his bosom after 12 months in the wilderness. Perhaps it is only a mark of his desire to win yesterday, a desire passed down to his players, but I was sitting next to my cousin, a Galway club hurler, and it was hard to have much sympathy for Cody's travails when you think that Galway last won an All-Ireland in hurling in 1988.
- Nicky English. He was a few rows behind us with his son. His face tells the story of a lifetime of battle playing hurling. Legend.
- Tommy Walsh leaping like he was in the Bolshoi ballet to bring a ball down from the heavens.
- A guy in Gill's with a Kilkenny jersey and an image of Brian Cody looking like Don Corleone screenprinted on the back. The text read: 'The Catfather'.
- Lar doing nothing. How many touches did Corbett have in the whole match? His pass to Bourke made the goal, but that was one of about 3 times that Tipp got him isolated. When he had another chance to turn on Tyrell five minutes later, and he missed the pass, it was obvious that it was game, set, match.
- A few Dublin minor hurlers standing outside the stadium afterwards. For the neutral, Dublin are almost all we have now. Some may trumpet the greatness of the Kilkenny team but to me, it's just a return to the boring homogeneity of excellence in sport. United and Barcelona in football, Kerry and Kilkenny in GAA. It was a bad year for hurling. Yesterday's much-hyped epic was flat for most of the first half and marked by loads of handling errors and wides. Maybe not Godfather 3, but definitely Naked Gun 33 1/3. It's up to Dublin now and hopefully a rejuvenated Cork to turn next season into something more than another bland procession to Kilkenny-Tipp.
