Leinster champions not represented for the first time as Tony Kelly becomes most honoured Clare player
The 2024 team is confined to just three counties, the joint lowest spread that mirrors 2014 when Kilkenny, Tipperary and Limerick players were only selected. Even the 2021 team, when Limerick won a record 12 awards, was spread across four different counties.
This time All-Ireland champions Clare lead the way with six awards with Cork winning five and Limerick, champions for the previous four years, claiming four.
But for Leinster champions Kilkenny, who lost to a Clare side making a late surge in the All-Ireland semi-final, there’s a blank, the first time since Tipperary in 2012 that a player from the provincial champions has not been honoured.
There was no actual Leinster representation on the team in 2017 but Galway, as the province’s champions who went on to win the All-Ireland title, did win most awards that year.
Kilkenny’s best prospects for awards were arguably their midfielder Cian Kenny and half-forward John Donnelly.
Kenny brought consistency throughout until the second half of the Clare game, racking up 0-8 overall including 0-4 in the Leinster final.
The hurling All-Star team.
But ultimately he was displaced by Clare’s Tony Kelly, who finished the season like a train to produce a memorable All-Ireland final performance with that goal for the ages capping a 1-4 contribution.
It was the majesty of that contribution that got Kelly over the line for what it is fifth All-Star, now putting him ahead of his current manager Brian Lohan and Jamesie O’Connor as Clare’s most decorated award winner. Kelly was an All-Star in 2013 and again between 2020 and 2022 before missing out narrowly last year.
He missed much of the Munster Championship but was back for the final and scored 2-20 overall, hitting three late points to tie down the win over Kilkenny in the semi-final.
Donnelly had his best season for Kilkenny at wing-forward scoring 0-20, half of which was run up against Dublin.
But the Thomastown man, fresh from his first Kilkenny county title last weekend, was up against Cork’s Séamus Harnedy and clearly the selection committee felt Harnedy’s 1-20 through Munster and the All-Ireland series was mined against superior opponents to merit inclusion.
There are first awards for five players, Cork’s Downey brothers, Eoin and Rob who are full-back and centre-back respectively, their colleague Shane Barrett and Clare duo Adam Hogan and Mark Rodgers.
Rodgers was last year’s young hurler of the year and this season amassed 3-27, 3-14 of which was from play.
Hogan followed on from a fine debut year in 2023 to shut out some of the form forwards in the game, especially Kilkenny’s Eoin Cody and Cork’s Brian Hayes in the All-Ireland semi-final and final.
Rob Downey’s switch to centre-back in Ciarán Joyce’s absence for the Limerick game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, that saved their season, was pivotal and he continued that rich vein of form, landing that spectacular early goal in the All-Ireland final.
With brother Eoin they become the fourth set of Cork brothers to win All-Stars, following on from Tom and Jim Cashman, Ben and Jerry O’Connor and Seán and Setanta Ó hAilpín.
Kelly and Hogan are joined by five other colleagues, among them the new Hurler of the Year Shane O’Donnell who has picked up an award for the third successive year, highlighting what a second half to his career he is having.
David McInerney has picked up a second award, having won his first in 2013, an 11-year gap that is the widest for any hurler between first and second awards.
David Fitzgerald has claimed the right half-forward spot for his second award. The league’s best player as Clare won that title, he had a strong Munster championship and hit 0-4 in the Munster final but wasn’t as assured from that point on.
Fitzgerald was in direct competition with Limerick’s Gearóid Hegarty who was superb through Munster but Hegarty has been accommodated at right corner-forward where he moved briefly during the season, most notably against Clare in the opening round.
In addition to Hegarty, who has won his fourth award, Kyle Hayes is one of four Limerick players to be honoured for a season that brought them a sixth successive Munster title.
Hayes’s fifth award, all in succession since 2020, brings him level with Limerick’s iconic full-back Pat Hartigan who won five-in-a-row in the first five years of the scheme. But that is still one short of Joe McKenna’s six with the county.
While that sequence is impressive it still falls some way short of Kilkenny trailblazers Tommy Walsh who won nine successive All-Stars between 2003 and 2011 and Henry Shefflin who amassed eight consecutively between 2002 and 2009, in addition to his other three.
Goalkeeper Nickie Quaid has won his third All-Star award, as the dovetailing between himself and Kilkenny’s Eoin Murphy continues in this decade.
For the second year running Dan Morrissey is named at left corner-back as an accommodation warranted by his impressive displays through Munster.
For Cork’s Darragh Fitzgibbon there is a second award at midfield, having won a first in 2018.
