Blue sky thinking led to capital returns

Pat Gilroy completely overhauled Dublin's style of playing and mindset but now the question is can they go on and dominate the footballing landscape, writes KEITH DUGGAN

DUBLIN HAD been All-Ireland champions for less than an hour when Pat Gilroy found his mind wandering to a half forgotten match played on an October evening in Monaghan. Even in the wonderful haze that followed those through-the-looking-glass last 10 minutes and the sudden return to triumph of Dublin football, Gilroy’s customary composure did not desert him.

When a team wins an All-Ireland title there is a tendency to treat it as a fait accompli and to immediately revise every match as a plotted step along an inevitable path.

Now that Dublin had beaten Kerry, the questions started. How had they done this? What had changed?

How had they recovered from the unholy walloping that the Kingdom had handed down two summers ago? And scenes from the Shangri-La Corduff-style flashed across Gilroy’s mind.

“We had a helter-skelter match on the pitch,” laughs Seamus McEnaney, the Monaghan manager that evening. “We put it up to each other. It was raining and windy and our pitch under lights would be slightly open. But the teams absolutely took lumps out of each other that evening. I was expecting it too.

“The following year we went to the Ulster final. But we played Dublin every year and every game was on the edge. This was in October when there was nothing at stake.”

That two-year-old challenge match is as good a starting point as any as to how Dublin won an All-Ireland title after 16 seasons of trying. It is not hard to picture the unrelenting grimness of the scene: the drizzle, the spotlights, the voices of the few maniacal fans that bothered showed up, hands frozen, challenges thrown in with no fear of bookings or suspension and with the recklessness of players desperate to stake a claim and nothing but the winter to look forward to.

The Dublin squad played the game and they spoke about the capitulation against Kerry and presumably availed of the saloons in Kavanagh country and that was that.

We forget that those scenes are closer to the reality of life for an intercounty footballer whereas the fabulous drama of last Sunday is closer to a fantasy (it is, after all, an unfulfilled fantasy of the vast majority of intercounty GAA players: most do not get to play in an All-Ireland final And most embark upon their intercounty careers in the near certain knowledge that they never will). And it illuminates the strange environment that all Dublin football teams have to contend with: lionised each summer in Croke Park, subject to intense media and public scrutiny when reality fails to meet expectations and then kind of . . . discarded for another year.

In the league, Dublin are much like any other county, bringing a small band of loyal followers on the road and comfortably accommodating all in their local base in Parnell Park.

And then, on summer Sundays, they attract crowds that can exceed the biggest sports franchises in the world.

Now, out of the blue, they have delivered. It was the most perfect win because Dublin achieved it just as most believed their chance had passed: a rush and a push and the land that we stand on is ours.

And in the end, it was achieved through the virtue of attacking football. Four points down and seven minutes on the clock, the Dubs had no option but to start six-shooting. The volley of scores into the Hill harked back to games over the last decade when Dublin scored plenty but came out the wrong side of big games.

Now, it all fell into place. But overall, it was achieved by Gilroy’s methodical and thorough overhaul of how Dublin played and thought about the game.

They changed everything except the colour of their shirts. When Larry Tompkins, the former Cork captain and manager, left Croke Park on Sunday, he felt that he might have seen the last of a great Kerry team but quickly told himself that history – and Kerry tradition – would suggest otherwise.

As he pointed out, with seven minutes to go, Kerry were in control of the All-Ireland title. The pendulum swung dramatically because of Dublin’s energy and their formidable mental strength – the quality which most impressed him about Dublin this year.

“They didn’t panic and kept playing until the bitter end and eliminated a lot of the mistakes they were making previously,” Tompkins says. “So what Pat Gilroy was doing – his early morning training sessions might not have been the hardest training sessions – but mentally he was getting them out there and learning about who had the mental toughness to be there and be ready to train at that time of the morning.

“And people may have laughed at the idea at the time but it was the key. You weren’t dealing with Kerry players here: you were dealing with Dublin players who had won nothing. You have to build teams and players differently and you have to do different things with them.”

Since defeating Wexford in the Leinster final, Gilroy had drafted Cian O’Sullivan into the defence and Michael Dara Macauley had recovered from the injury that had kept him sidelined for the provincial showpiece. Watching the All-Ireland final from the stands, Wexford manager Jason Ryan felt that their return offset the fact that Paul Flynn – labouring under a hamstring injury which saw him just about pass a late fitness test – had one of his quieter games.

Flynn’s work and his ability to set the tempo for Dublin had impressed Ryan hugely all year. But as he watched the team that have kept Leinster locked down close in on the All-Ireland, it was their collective composure that shone through again.

“The difference for me is this incredible self belief. In certain stages during our game, there was frustration setting in and they were trying, trying, trying but it wasn’t quite coming together. But in the Kerry game they were very composed and workmanlike in what they wanted to do.

“In Donegal, okay, there was controversy about how Diarmuid Connolly reacted but in general their discipline was exemplary this year.”

DUBLIN’S LACK of All-Ireland success was threatening to become an anomaly within the GAA. It is no secret that the association was keen for the city team to win the Sam Maguire – not just because Dublin on a roll is a flabbergasting cash cow but because it was vital to safeguard the successful underage work in the necklace of clubs across the city.

Christy Cooney this week alluded to the radical and idealistic plan launched in 2002 to effectively split the city using the Liffey as a kind of Rio-Grande border and create two Dublin football teams. The idea was original and well intentioned but met with fierce opposition.

A more traditional form of development was favoured: coaching and money. The financial investment – some €2 million this year – was returned by the appearance of the Dublin hurlers and footballers in four All-Ireland finals.

To other smaller counties, Dublin must now appear as a juggernaut just beginning to gain speed. Having lost the All-Ireland minor final in sensational and heartbreaking circumstances to Tipperary, it was down to the Dublin senior team to ensure that the season was not a complete wash out.

The reviews of the All-Ireland final undertaken in Kerry will invariably hold the team to account for dilly-dallying when they had a four- point lead and possession with seven minutes left on the clock. That aspect can be argued but it should not be allowed to diminish the fact that Dublin still had to concoct 1-2 in the last nine minutes of the match – including injury time. Seamus McEnaney believes that the conditioning of the Dublin men was crucial during that period.

McEnaney had transformed Monaghan from being a Division Four team to being the toughest team in Ulster through fitness and strength work: he knew what he had seen.

“You go back to Armagh in 2002 and how they set the standard for physical strength. But Dublin’s conditioning this year was phenomenal and they have set the bar at a level that is scary for all other teams.”

Did Kerry run out of juice? When Jack O’Connor enticed Eoin Brosnan out of retirement in January, it was because he saw the laconic Killarney man as the answer to a centre-back conundrum. Brosnan was not a typical number six but he held the line extremely well last Sunday and the space that Dublin found after his departure on 60 minutes was no coincidence. But when the Dublin forwards ran at the Kerry defence, good things happened for them. They exploited the sense that once isolated, the Kerry defenders were vulnerable.

It is arguable that had the Kerry men dragged Kevin McManamon down on his run – even at the cost of a sending-off – they would have hung on. But the goal turned Croke Park into Vesuvius and Kerry had no time to react: it was a tribute to their character that they had the wherewithal to engineer that brilliant point scored by Kieran Donaghy in the maelstrom.

The criticism levelled at Jack O’Connor doesn’t fully stack up either: his team had outplayed Dublin by 0-8 to 0-3 in the second half and literally nobody in the world saw the reversal of fortune coming. Had the game gone along all reasonable and expected lines, O’Connor’s timing – and his unorthodox use of Donaghy – would have been hailed as a master class.

The players may have been inexplicably casual on the ball in the lead up to that goal, and they will long rue not hoofing it into Donaghy: the Tralee man was in such cussed and fiery form that he could have produced something from nothing. Instead, they were caught. Larry Tompkins knows his neighbours of old and is certain how they will respond to this disappointment.

“If you asked me that when the whistle went, I would have seen Kerry fellas who were there a long time and there were tired limbs and what not. But I would see this as a huge motivation for Kerry and I know the way they think and the way they respond to setbacks like this. So I see them as the team to beat next year.

“That is what makes them so good: when they are hurt, they come back twice as hard. Let’s be honest, that All-Ireland final was theirs with seven minutes to go last Sunday. They will regroup and ask themselves if that is the way they want to go out and I think we know what the answer will be. And that is why they have so many All-Irelands.”

The bigger question concerns how Dublin will respond. A 16-year gap was hardly in the master plan back when Dublin celebrated the All-Ireland back in 1995. The structures are in place now and the senior team is young: they would appear ideally placed to leave their stamp on GAA culture in much the same way as the iconic 1970s team.

But the football landscape is more cutthroat now. Kerry’s back-to-back All-Ireland success in 2006 and 2007 was split between two different managements (O’Connor and Pat O’Shea) and so might not have received the praise that it should have.

Prior to that, Tompkins was the last man to captain a back-to-back All-Ireland team, when his teak-tough Cork team retained the title in 1990. When Tompkins thinks about that team, he sees the fierce rivalry that they engaged Meath in as a fundamental reason.

“Football was harder and tougher then and we had to learn about that in Cork – maybe we hadn’t gone in for that on-the-edge stuff as Meath did but we learned to adapt. They brought out that intensity in us.”

Cork had lost the All-Ireland finals of 1987 and 1988, two dark and bruising encounters before claiming the next two. They were a deeply driven team. After the parties conclude in Dublin, the question will soon arise: can they keep the All-Ireland next year?

“I think a lot of it has to do with the make up of the squad and players as to how they think about and the drive and the hunger. Dublin is a traditional GAA county and you think of Kilkenny in hurling: you know that they are going to want to be there again next year. The mentality is different.

“Dublin will celebrate this well and there will be a lot of touring around.

“And there are a number of young, new players on the team too. It is a hard question to answer. It comes down to the individuals, to push themselves into working as hard next year. Because naturally when you win it, teams want to beat you the following season. You often learn a lot more about your team the second time around than when you win the first time.”

And although the records show that this was Dublin’s 23rd All-Ireland title, it felt like its first. It was certainly the first in the brave new world of Gaelic games, which has undergone a revolutionary change in profile even since Dublin last won the title.

AROUND THE country, other teams are beginning to process the consequences of Dublin as All-Ireland champions.

In Cork, Dublin’s success will deepen the sense that this was a lost year for the reigning All-Ireland champions. Now, Cork have questions to answer of their own and Tompkins believes that Dublin would do well to learn from Cork’s experience of defending the All-Ireland.

“People felt that with Cork, now that the monkey is off their back they would go out and express themselves and play great. But it wasn’t about their ability: I think they lacked the drive to maintain what they had the previous year – that hunger and desire.

“They had their All-Ireland medal and they were heroes in their own place and they accepted that. But it takes a different animal to go and win it back to back.

“You would hope that if they have anything in them at all that they will come back next year. A lot of people around here are probably saying that they won an All-Ireland, which is great but the major test is to beat Kerry in a big game which they haven’t really done. So there are question-marks still there. And if I was one of the Cork players, I wouldn’t be happy with the situation where I was listening to that in a number of years’ time. Okay, the medal is there but the gloss is off it a bit now.

“So again, it comes down to the people. Cork probably have a small transition to go through – they probably need to freshen it up a bit. So it will be interesting to see where they go from here.”

The same is true of all other counties. Kerry are the most dependable: as Seamus McEnaney says with absolute certainty, “they will be back in the All-Ireland quarter-finals in 10 months. And with five of the best forwards in Ireland, they are going to be dangerous. And they will be hurting.”

But other teams with big plans can look to Dublin as a guiding light. In recent years, all of Dublin’s ambitions have gone up in smoke but they have returned that little bit meaner and wiser.

It paid off. In some ways, it changes nothing. As Jason Ryan points out, winning a Leinster title was an extremely tough proposition even before Dublin won the All-Ireland.

“History is a hard thing to overturn regardless of the trophies in the cabinet,” he says. Seamus McEnaney believes that Leinster has now overtaken Ulster has the toughest province in which to win a title.

But he also believes that the top 10 or 12 counties in Ireland will take note of how Dublin transformed themselves and knuckle down with renewed intensity. All teams will plan their preparations before disbanding for the close season but as early as the next few weeks, they will begin to turn their minds to next year.

As Larry Tompkins sees it, the success of any team will always come from the fire within.

“It all boils down to what you want from the game.”

The Lost Seconds

DESPITE repeated invitations, Jack O'Connor refused to be drawn on the time that Stephen Cluxton used in walking up to take the free which won the match for Dublin.

"I wasn't timing him," the Kerry men said quietly at the post-match press conference. But the issue of time eaten up with frees is another loose end that could be tied up.

It happens regularly: Cluxton's was just conspicuous because of the importance of the free. The last free was awarded at 70.50 and kicked by Cluxton at 71.51 (61 seconds later). But at 56.52, Kerry were awarded a free which Bryan Sheehan kicked at 58.09 (77 seconds later), of which there wasn't a word.

There was no delay for an injury treatment: Kerry were simply in no rush.

The issue of killing time is going to remain unless sanctions are imposed.

One solution would be to limit the time in which a free can be taken.

Another would be to play injury time running the clock only when the ball is actually in play.

Had that been applied last Sunday, Kerry would have had a full minute after Cluxton's free to try and work their way up the field and score an equaliser.