Brian Cody has rubbished suggestions that Kilkenny didn't take this year's NHL seriously.

Surprisingly, the Cats lost three of their seven games and were out of contention for the latter stages by the end of March. But speaking ahead of Sunday's All-Ireland final against Tipperary, the Kilkenny manager insisted that the league defeats hadn't been part of the plan.

"It wasn't like this master-plan of 'to hell with the league' was there. Do we want to do well in the league? Of course we want to do well in the league. We lost three games but were in the hunt to win those," he said.

"It was never a lack of effort or never a case after, of we were better off. A lot of lads have miles on the clock but it's a question of staying in good shape and while they've a lot of mileage, they also have a great build-up of serious fitness as a result of that - and serious experience with dealing with situations."

He continued: "Coming in from the league I'd say some people were saying 'their time is up' and even against Dublin, we won well on the scoreboard and Dublin didn't play well, but we didn't play particularly well.

"We'd a huge amount of wides against Galway, we created a lot of chances in the first half against Cork we were very, very good but the second day we weren't and coming in we lost Brian (Hogan) and Henry (Shefflin) in the first half, it wasn't all smooth but smooth is not all that important either."

Cody believes Tipp will be well up for Sunday's game after their controversial defeat in last year's decider.

"It could be motivation for them more than us," he said.

"They'll say 'we almost won it last year and we're going to finish it off this year'. That's understandable, we'd have been in that situation ourselves down through the years. You'll have regrets over ones you didn't win... it's not tragedy, just sheer disappointment.

"I cherish winning what we win but it doesn't carry on until the next year. Losing could. If you lose to a team last year you certainly don't want to lose to the same team again. If you've won it last year you certainly don't want to lose it the next year."

Cody doesn't feel there's more pressure on his side this year as they bid for an historic five-in-a-row.

"To be honest I don't. I don't feel any. It's like the (Shefflin) injury, it's a kind of speculative thing that people canspeculate about but we can't speculate about anything. We're in a situation where we're just fighting to win a game." Tweet

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