New boss Ger Cunningham eager to impress with Dublin

Ger Cunningham didn’t think this is where he’d find himself, his chair backed onto a window overlooking Parnell Park, navy and blue around his shoulders rather than red and white. A veteran of intercounty back-room teams for the past decade, part of him always figured he’d take the step up to a somewhere along the way. But if it’s to be in the colours he served for so long as a player and coach, it will have to wait at least another three years.

Dublin county chairman and noted shrinking violet Andy Kettle declared that they had hit the jackpot.

“We need to get to the next level, we have got so far up the road and made huge progress, but it’s always the last five per cent that counts. We feel Ger and the management team will bring Dublin to the next level.”

As for Mr Five Per Cent himself, he’s had a month to get his head around the idea.

“I suppose I wouldn’t have thought that I’d be sitting here as Dublin manager and not Cork manager. I think it’s a great compliment that Dublin have put the next three years into my hands and I’m looking forward to repaying that trust for them.

Top coaches

“I think when you’re involved at intercounty level and working with top coaches like Donal O’Grady and John Allen and Jimmy Barry-Murphy, you hope to learn from these guys and you watch how they do it. And I always said that if the opportunity came along I’d take a look at it.”

Predictably, the vexed issue of dual players came up. Cunningham is meeting the current panel for the first time this weekend and hasn’t had any contact with the likes of Ciarán Kilkenny or Cormac Costello. In an ideal world, he’d have them and others on board. But it’s quite a while since anyone mistook Dublin hurling for an ideal world.

“There are guys playing football who are obviously very good hurlers, I would have seen them over the last number of years. Obviously they have commitments to the football team at the moment and maybe it is something down the road that they might look at. We’ll have to earn that right, give them something hopefully that they see an opportunity to win an All-Ireland medal with the hurlers, and that at some stage in the future they might consider it.

“You’d love a situation where you could get those guys to play hurling if they could. It is probably difficult. Jim Gavin has said on record that he doesn’t see it as a situation where people can do the two, so we’ll see.

One sport

“With a degree of co-operation it’s something that could be looked at but whether it will be playing just one sport, I don’t know. Dual is difficult, there’s no doubt about that. You can see how difficult it is.

“But a lot of those Dublin guys have All-Ireland medals in football. It would be great to see them get All-Ireland medals in hurling.”

Cunningham’s backroom is well stocked. Tommy Dunne was an intermittent presence during Daly’s time, coaching on and off, and Gearóid Ó Riain is the former Kilmacud Crokes manager.

“Signing up Shay Boland is quite a coup, since the former minor and under-21 manager was reportedly quite put out at not getting the job himself.

“In fairness to him, Shay is a passionate Dublin hurling man, obviously having been involved at minor and under-21 level,” said Cunningham. “

“We had a couple of chats and hopefully I convinced him that getting involved would be the right thing to do. I’m delighted he’s involved because obviously I’m going to need guys here in Dublin who know the scene because they would probably know it a lot better than I would. So I think Shay fits that bill perfectly.”