Exhaustively-documented defections and retirements aside - injuries as well as Ballyhale Shamrocks’ participation in the AIB All-Ireland Club SHC series have decreed Brian Cody’s hands are somewhat tied at present in terms of team selections and match-day panel utilisation.

Of course, those aforementioned retirements represent massive losses to Cody’s army.

But dwelling on those players’ unavailability will only serve to impinge on Kilkenny’s aims this term, retaining the league, Leinster and All-Ireland titles.

Cody, his selectors and players operate off too professional a basis and mind-set for that to be the case.

Kilkenny have not been as successful in the last decade in particular as they have by indulging in sentimental values. Why should the Cats start now?

Ruthlessness is their default setting.

JJ Delaney has called time on his inter-county career.

Does anybody truly believe that Cody lies awake at night concentrating on the point that the likes of JJ Delaney will not be around this year despite referring to the Fenians clubman this week as the best defender he has seen?

Hardly.

Cody, instead, will be fixating his thoughts on which players he now has at his disposal that possess the required character traits to fill the boots of Delaney and co.

Cody always looks ahead, he has plenty of time, he will tell you, to reflect on his and Kilkenny’s achievements under the man’s guise when he retires.

Furthermore, that mentality has been embedded into every individual that wears the black and amber, and rightly so.

As it is, teams that wallow in their capacity to earn silverware tend to get left behind pretty quickly. Not Kilkenny, however.

Their world revolves around the next game and the next game only, looking beyond that is frowned upon within their circles.

Granted, nobody is naive enough to say their minds do not wander, in advance, towards a possible date at headquarters every September but these are things certainly not discussed as a group, either.

Licking their wounds for any reason is frowned upon even more throughout their camp.

So to even contemplate expecting their losses in personnel to detract from their annual missions’ focus to the point Kilkenny may struggle in the league is hyperbole, essentially.

Besides, even the team Cody has named to meet Cork would defeat an awful lot more of their competitors than they are being given credit for by outsiders.

There is at least two players in each line that are either first-choice operators as it is or bordering on the edge of first-choice recognition.

Jackie Tyrrell will lead the back line for Kilkenny on Saturday.

Paul Murphy and Jackie Tyrrell are named in the full-back line, Kieran Joyce and Cillian Buckley are stationed in the half-back line and the Conor Fogarty-Lester Ryan axis represents their midfield. Walter Walsh and Matthew Ruth will roam in the half-forward line while Mark Kelly and Jonjo Farrell join 2014 GAA/GPA Hurler of the Year Richie Hogan in the full-forward line.

That ain’t too shabby a two-thirds backbone of any team you will surely agree?

Kilkenny? Struggle? You must be joking!