No denying Dubs after years of work

SPORT REVIEW 2011:Dublin's league performances over the previous two seasons built the platform for what turned out to be their best All-Ireland run since winning the title 15 years previously

THE ABIDING image is of all Dublin’s dreams and ambitions coming to pass in the seconds at the end of this year’s All-Ireland final. From the moment Bernard Brogan began to wave at Stephen Cluxton to come up and take the free awarded deep into injury-time, there was a mounting sense that not only was the team being granted a shot to nothing at a first Sam Maguire in 16 years but that it was perfectly positioned for the goalkeeper, who had already kicked 11 points from dead balls in the championship.

Maybe the mechanics of the winning score had their origins in the realisation that Cluxton’s ability to hit targets with precision when practising his kick-outs might have other applications but the win – only Dublin’s second in nearly 80 years in an All-Ireland final against Kerry – should be traced back through the evolving relationship with their opponents since the humiliation of that 17-point mauling in the 2009 All-Ireland quarter-final.

Tracing that relationship is a journey that takes us through the past couple of national league seasons and reflects that competition’s continuing relevance to the championship during the 10 years since it became a calendar-year competition and the coterminus introduction of the qualifiers.

Six months after the 2009 calamity Dublin went to Killarney and won a first league match in Kerry for 28 years. Among the debutants that day were James McCarthy, Michael Darragh Macauley and Kevin McManamon.

The result raised the curtain on Dublin’s best league campaign in 11 years, concluding in a narrow failure to reach the final and a platform for what turned out to be their best All-Ireland run since winning the title 15 years previously.

Last February after banking another opening-day two points on the road, this time on a damp night in Armagh, manager Pat Gilroy said: “When you travel and come up to a place like this, Dublin teams don’t come away with wins that often but we’ve managed a few in the last two years and that helps confidence. There’s no doubt about it.”

In retrospect the significance of this is obvious, as two consistent league seasons replaced the mediocrity that had characterised the previous decade and the impact on championship performance became quickly evident. In 2010 an impressive win in Omagh to relegate Tyrone was replicated in that year’s All-Ireland quarter-final.

Later last February the previous year’s win over Kerry was repeated at home under lights in Croke Park, on the way to an unbeaten season in Division One. Defeat in the league final against Cork was seen by some as further evidence of the team’s inability to finish out important matches but such interpretations were unfair. No team, finishing a match short four of its best forwards deserves to be judged on outcome alone.

So for all the odds stacked in Kerry’s favour last September – experience, a cadre of quality forwards and some outstanding defenders – the fact was that Dublin had beaten them in the counties’ two most recent competitive meetings.

Nearly all counties will say that beating Kerry in a final makes success doubly gratifying but for Dublin that is especially true after generations of a long running rivalry that has been drastically tilted against them. The mystique of Kevin Heffernan’s team in the 1970s was largely inspired by his quest to defeat Kerry and how it became one of the most gripping narratives in GAA history.

Kerry remain the green-and-gold standard in football. They will have been furious at losing a match which looked in their pocket with six minutes to go but calmer counsels in the county have pointed out that unlike the last All-Ireland win in 2009, multiple significant departures aren’t expected. And now that Darran O’Sullivan has finally emerged as a top-class talent – and there were signs in the final that Kieran Donaghy had recaptured his best form – the future isn’t by any means bleak.

There were also interim goals achieved in 2011. Donegal may have finished 2011 just as manager Jim McGuinness wouldn’t have wished – in the focus of a disciplinary row – but the year was otherwise a big success. Winning promotion and the Division Two title laid the ground for a first Ulster title in 19 years.

Reactions to Donegal’s implementation of what might be termed cat o’naccio were sometimes excessively judgemental; after all, what obligation is there on amateurs to entertain? Even the much reviled Dublin semi-final had a tactical fascination and exposed some fault lines in the armoury of the eventual champions.

But on a cautionary note, the insistence on being judged on results alone is precarious. This year the results were excellent. Next year if Kevin Cassidy’s banishment for co-operating in an interesting book is confirmed, the team’s capacity will be damaged but the criteria will remain the same.

Mayo’s embrace of similar ideas under another new manager James Horan caused less outrage, maybe because they came to a more conventional end in their semi-final. Like Wile E Coyote in Roadrunner they chased Kerry over a cliff before realising they were running on air but it was a good solid year of reconstruction which they’ll need in Connacht if Alan Mulholland recreates at senior level the under-age success he supervised in Galway.

Interestingly for the first year in the qualifier era all the provincial champions presented for the All-Ireland semi-finals, easing the panic of 2010 when none of them managed to.

There was jubilation in Tipperary rather later in September than the county would be used to when their football development programme came up against the juggernaut of Dublin’s under-age machinery and pulled off a famous minor All-Ireland victory.

Galway came up with a third under-21 All-Ireland in 10 years whereas it was business as usual for Crossmaglen Rangers, who added a fifth All-Ireland club title since 1997, and UCC, who with a traditionally anonymous (although probably not for long) team of students under the wise but still energised guidance of Billy Morgan whipped away the Sigerson Cup from the galacticos of rival colleges.