Dublin work off past pain to send strong message to doubters

Every All-Ireland has its context. Some are about finding a way out of the darkness, some are about righting a wrong. This one sits four-square in the latter category for Dublin. In a world of excellence and high performance, there's still a bit to be said for having your pride stung and your gumption undermined. As twilight fell, just about every Dub who stopped to chat referenced the defeat to Donegal in last year's All-Ireland semi-final.

“Look, there was a lot of hurt over last year,” said James McCarthy. “A lot of stuff said about us. A lot of people questioned our character. A lot of slurry thrown at us, I thought. People calling us cowards and chokers and bottlers.

“There’s a lot of men in there with a lot of medals. As much as you try and block it out, it still creeps through and you hear it. It annoyed me. And it annoyed a lot of men in that changing room. But I think we gave the answer in the last couple of weeks.”

While Declan Darcy wasn't quite as jizzed about it, he conceded that they came into 2015 with the sound of 2014 still ringing in their ears.

“I think in any sporting context, a loss can be better for you than a win. Kerry lost to us in 2013 and I think they went off and were hurting and it was maybe one of the reasons that drove them on to win it the following year. It is no harm to have that little bit of hurt to drive you. Winning isn’t going to happen every day and how you react to defeat is crucial.

“This group of players has been magnificent all year, they’ve answered all the questions. I know everyone goes on about the Derry game in the league but even that night they did what they had to do without any bells and whistle. And I think that was the key to this year - we did what we had to do when it mattered most.”

The learned plenty from the Donegal game, they learned more again from drawn semi-final and replay against Mayo this year.

"Of course we did," said Bernard Brogan. "We studied it a lot. The second Mayo game we learned a lot. The first game, we were over excited and over exuberant, jumping around and indisciplined and moving frees forward and fouling lads. The second day we were a lot more cool under pressure. The job was to be done and we did that. We took a lot of lessons from that to be emotionally in tune."

The two weeks between that replay and the final compressed the space in which to prepare - for nobody more than Cian O’Sullivan. The level of effort that went in to getting him on the pitch was enormous, albeit that he laughed away a suggestion that he’d had an ice-bath installed in his house for the fortnight.

“No! I didn’t have an ice bath in the house. I had this machine called a Game Ready. It wraps around your leg and it’s a fancy ice-pack basically. Every part of it was worth it to get to tog out with the guys and play a part in winning an All-Ireland. Absolutely delighted.

“I kind of ate, slept and drank rehab for those two weeks. I need to say a very special thanks to our medical and our physio Ciarán O’Reilly. They bent over backwards to make sure in those two weeks that no stone was unturned.

“I was doing physio twice a day. I was doing treatment and PRP (Platelet-rich plasma) and my employers PWC were very understanding as well. It’s a very busy time of year for us. Work had to take a back seat for a few weeks. I had to work from home but with all the treatment, it was difficult to get much done, so special thank you to them too. But when the prize is this big and this great, you’ll do anything to get there. Thankfully it paid off.”

For all players, the build-up to any All-Ireland is a game of dodge and weave at the best of times. That goes double when your hamstring is the talk of the city.

“People come up to you and the first thing they say to you is ‘how’s the leg?’. They mean no malice, they’re just trying to be nice, but in reality it’s the last thing you want to hear and it’s a bit of a mind melt. The last two weeks in the run-up to this game, distractions was one of the big things we talked about and being able to avoid them.

“We had a few little techniques there to help understand that the people who say these things and what’s said in the newspapers, they’re in a different place to this squad and where our vision is. I think we coped with it well and I coped with it well, even though it was tough at time. I was thinking sometimes was I focusing too much on my leg and not enough on the opposition, but I think I got the balance right.”