Four-time Kilkenny All-Star Jackie Tyrrell is not expecting his native county to struggle with life after Brian Cody as their new era starts with an Allianz League clash in Belfast on Sunday afternoon.
Derek Lyng will be on the sideline for the game with Antrim at Corrigan Park – some 9059 days since the Cats last played a league game without Cody as manager, when Kevin Fennelly's side lost 2-18 to 2-13 to Waterford in April 1998.
From his appointment in late 1998 until his resignation in July, Cody won 11 All-Ireland titles, 18 Leinster Championships and ten league crowns.
Comparisons with another sporting code have been inevitable, more specifically Manchester United’s fall from grace with the club looking likely to go a 10th year without a league title in a few months having won 13 in 26 seasons under Alex Ferguson until he stepped away in 2013.
David Moyes had the unfortunate task of following Ferguson, and while he was a failure, Tyrrell sees no chance of a 'Moysie moment’ with Kilkenny.
"I'd like to think that Kilkenny and Manchester United are worlds apart in so many ways," he told the RTÉ GAA Podcast.
"The strength of Kilkenny was Brian Cody and the Kilkenny County Board, the structures that have stood the test of time.
"Derek would really be a players’ man, a very approachable guy. He would be able to get in amongst them, talk to them, get his arm around the shoulder of some lads, give lads a kick in the backside if they need it.
"I’d say he won’t rock the boat too much, it would be a continuity of a lot of the things that Brian has done and he’ll slowly start putting his own slant on his style of management and this group.
"If you’re looking at the learnings of the under-20s and what he did with them, he did have in Billy Ryan a kind of a lynchpin of an inside man – they did go long from time to time and he was able to win his own ball.
"So you could see how he would use that maybe in a TJ Reid role, TJ maybe at 14 and work the ball through the lines."
Tyrrell said that while he is positive Lyng is the right man to follow Cody, he does feel that it may take some time to see what sort of style last year's All-Ireland U20 winning boss imposes on the team.
"He probably has a lot of things to manage. Richie Hogan, TJ Reid - a lot of miles on the clock, the integration of the U20s, but essentially it’s a new era for Kilkenny.
"[Conversely] to what people would think with Brian and his lack of movable tactics, throughout last year he did start to use the ball an awful lot shorter, he did start to retain possession an awful lot more.
"So, it will be interesting to see does Derek continue with that, does he accelerate it a bit more.
"I did go to a couple of the Walsh Cup games. They were really, really poor, it was hard to see kind of what style of play Derek was trying to implement.
"It’s going to be a wait and see but you couldn’t have a better guy positioned to take it on from Brian.
"Having been in there as a selector for a couple of years, going back to the outstanding job with the U20s, [he] has featured with his club in a management role as well. He’s in a really good position to take that on and has brought in the U20 selection committee as well, so there’s a good bit of continuity there."
A number of those U20s are likely to get an opportunity in Corrigan Park - and in the rounds to come as Lyng exposes those fresher faces to the harsher realities of senior inter-county hurling.
"I think Derek is taking the team over in a really good place. In fairness to Brian, he left them in such a competitive place where they really went at Limerick last year and are in a really good place to take it on.
"Underneath that, Mikey Carey has left the panel and has gone travelling, Conor Browne has gone travelling as has Richie Leahy.
"Derek’s approach to the league, considering he had that success with the U20s last year, will be how many of these lads can he bring through. Can Billy Drennan be the man up top for us? Will the likes of a Gearóid Dunne, could he feature or could be an impact off the bench?
"He will be really unearthing all that talent giving them as much exposure as possible, particularly as he will give the Ballyhale guys a bit of a break.
"TJ will get a long break, Eoin Cody was back last night playing in the Fitzgibbon, he’ll probably get an extended break. There’s quite a good few of those there.
"Then there’s the likes of Darragh Corcaran, who had a really strong campaign with Ballyhale, I imagine he’ll come straight into the team. He could be a really good option at wing-back."
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