For an expansive interview in Saturday's Irish Examiner, the two men’s conversation reflects this facet. Richie Sr explained in striking terms what he considers Kilkenny hurling’s current detachment from hard realities: “We’d be a small county compared to the Tipperarys and the Kerrys and the Corks. We only have 38 hurling clubs. And some of those clubs are very small.

“The job that I did for almost 30 years in Britvic brought me to Limerick a good few years ago. I was there for a sales meeting. When we went for a bite to eat, Joe McKenna and two other gentlemen walked in. And I said hello to Joe, because I obviously knew him from hurling.

“Kevin Herbert was working with me and his brother Pat hurled with Limerick at corner back in my time. And Kevin said: ‘Richie, they are the three men who are putting a structure in place for Limerick hurling.’ Definitely, they were doing their homework. Definitely, they put in the groundwork. The Limerick four in a row started there.” 

He elaborates: “I think the longest Kilkenny have ever gone without winning a Senior All-Ireland is ten years, since they won their first one back at the start of the 20th century. People mightn’t like me saying this but we could go way beyond that now, way beyond ten years. I hope I’m totally wrong. I hope someone will ram it down my throat in 12 months’ time.

“But our underage has fallen apart, the last number of years. The eye was taken off the ball, to my mind, when we had that glorious Senior team, over 15 or so years. We just seemed to close the book on it for six or eight years.” 

Power is not abstract: “I believe Kilkenny GAA should have more than one main sponsor. There are people in the county with serious businesses. And the training that is going on now at inter-county level is not going to come back down. That training has gone too far, in my view. But it’s not, at the same time, going to come back down.

“The logical follow through is that the players are going to have to be looked after better. Proper coaches have to be got in at all levels, from underage up, to develop future players. Because the Limericks are doing it, the Corks are doing it, on the hurling front. That, to me, is a worry. A big worry.” 

His son agrees with this assessment: “I think from my time, which isn’t so long ago, to today it’s probably after going from zero to one hundred. I’d have no problem saying that. Maybe back in the middle 2000s companies saw taking on an intercounty hurler as promotional in a sense, as a good thing to have one as an employee, that someone with a profile will be a help to them.

“Whereas, today, I think it’s gone completely the opposite. It’s after turning upside down, the time that players are putting into it. They literally put the rest of their life on hold for the ten or 12 years they are in there with Kilkenny or Tipperary or whoever.

“You put your life on hold. You do very little travel. You can’t do any, in effect. You put family on hold. You put a relationship on hold, probably. Your work probably suffers, in certain ways. You see so many lads going back doing teaching, because the hours in teaching allow you to put in the hours in the gym and the hours training.” 

He continues: “That’s the way nearly every player is thinking. Dad is right when he says there are players stepping away from intercounty setups at the moment, just not able to commit that time that would give them the opportunity to put on a county jersey. And then there are other factors to it as well. Lads want to go and travel. They see hurling now as not being the be-all and end-all.” 

A young hurler gets mentioned in Power: A Family Memoir because he decided being a member of Tipperary’s Senior panel clashed with his work career. Both of the Powers feel this case is more indicative than exceptional. Richie Sr is again bracingly direct: “As I just said, I honestly think the intercountry scene is gone way too far. Back in the 1980s, I was giving 55 hours a week on the road, as a sales rep. And that’s what any sales rep that’s out there does. It’s not a 40-hour week. I was also working ten or 12 hours every weekend part-time.

“And that was to rear five kids, to pay your mortgage. That was the bottom line. We had to do it. And only for Ann… She was so supportive. She was brilliant, driving the lads here, driving the lads there, when I wasn’t around.” 

He believes the attraction of playing intercountry has been squeezed: “I thought I’d never see the day when a player in the likes of Kerry or Tipperary, great counties, would make the decision now not to jump on board their intercounty panel. In our time, you’d walk from Stoneyford to Kilkenny to train, if someone rang you up and said: ‘You’re on the Kilkenny Senior panel.’ You’d think nothing of walking in, if you had to.

“I had to organise my time, when I was hurling, very carefully. But it’s gone so far now that players are just not able to give this commitment. And I think that’s a pity. I really do.

“How far more can it go? They’re still amateur players. Mortgages are way bigger now than they were 30 or 40 years ago, when I was building a house.”

He returns to life’s specifics: “Richie went in Senior with Kilkenny at 19. Actually, he went in at 15, as a Minor. And he probably wouldn’t have come back out at 35, only for the misfortune of his knee injury. At 30 years of age, half of his life had been hurling with Kilkenny.

“When you finish, then, your priority is maybe to purchase a house, get that money together. It’s a big issue, as far as I am concerned. I'd just be very concerned that players are going to say: ‘I can’t give this commitment.’ That chap in Tipperary that I mentioned in the book had a choice between staying on the Tipperary panel and holding down his good job. And he said: ‘No. My job is my livelihood.’ And he pulled out.” 

Richie Jr nods. “I firmly believe we are ten years behind the Limericks and the Corks,” he states. “I’d even go as far as the Dublins and the Wexfords, and what they have in place. It’s worrying. I think the Kilkenny County Board have an awful lot of thinking to do. What is their plan to stop us being left behind? Have they a plan?” 

He admires a former teammate’s courage: “I give Derek Lyng a lot of credit for taking on the Senior job. Admittedly, I would be a bit biased there. Derek personally would have done a lot for me at the end of 2013 and throughout 2014. He was probably my only point of contact with the Kilkenny set-up during a lot of that season.

“At that time, I had no contact with Brian or Mick Dempsey or James McGarry. I had probably no contact with them for six or seven months. It was a tough time. But I suppose I had bigger issues I had to try and solve, demons I had to try and sort out.” 

I mention the possibility of the Kilkenny Senior panel being without a Celtic Cross holder in 12 months or at most 24 months, unless an All-Ireland is won in 2024 or 2025. If this scenario transpires, it would be for the first time ever. Even when there was a ten-year gap between victories, such as 1922 to 1932 or 1947 to 1957, there was always at least one player who bridged that gap. Both men are struck by the implication of this rapidly approaching prospect.

Richie Sr offers his own experience: “It would be a huge worry if that came about in a year’s time. There’s no doubt that the likes of Noel Skehan, Ger Henderson, Joe Hennessy, Billy Fitzpatrick and Ger Fennelly, when I went in with Kilkenny [in 1981], were important men to have beside you in the dressing room. They were all men I had massive time for, in any case, but also because they had been there and had won an All-Ireland. As far back, in Noel’s case, as 1972. They had all done it, which meant a lot to newcomers like me.” 

Richie Jr found exactly the same dynamic: “When I went in for 2005, there were obviously lots of players who had been there for the win in 2000. I think Peter Barry had been hurling for Kilkenny for ten years at that stage. There was a confidence in the dressing room that you could feed off, and confidence is really to do with winning.

“The big thing for us, of course, was that we were successful. When we went back for a new season, even in 2005, in the back of your mind you’re kind of thinking: ‘We’ll hopefully win a couple of All-Irelands, because the players are there.’ And I suppose when we started winning in 2006, 2007, 2008, you’re definitely going back training at the start of every year knowing that we are going to be there or thereabouts, if we can get things right.” 

He summarised: “That was probably the way I felt throughout my 11 years with Kilkenny. We never went back thinking ‘Maybe we’re struggling here’ or ‘Maybe we’re past it’, because the players were still there. And they had won.

“The situation in there now is very different.”