The Championship

Dublin manager Pat Gilroy revealed that a no holds barred team meeting nearly two years ago paved the way for the Metropolitans’ All-Ireland success.

The Dubs were humiliated by Kerry in the All-Ireland quarter-final in 2009, falling to a 17-point defeat only a year after suffering a similar setback against Tyrone at the same stage.

Four months after the Kerry defeat in 2009, Dublin took on Monaghan on a dreary night in Corduff and Gilroy revealed that a meeting had prior to the game sorted out a lot of issues that had been having an effect on the Dublin squad.

"We addressed the Kerry game in November 2009 in a very strong way," said Gilroy after Dublin’s epic victory yesterday.

"We dealt with it and it stayed there. I'm glad now we can really put it behind us but we did deal with it in Corduff in 2009. There was a development squad game where a lot of the guys came up as well. We played Monaghan under the lights in the rain. A lot of it was dealt with there and then. And that was the best place for it.”

The St. Vincent’s man added that he always had faith in his troops, even when the chips were down and Dublin trailed by four points with only seven minutes left on the clock.

That faith was a result of a never-say-die mentality adopted by Gilroy and his squad in the lead up to the game that served them well on the biggest stage of well.

"There's only so much pain humans can take and we've been through ... I mean I've only been here a short time in comparison to some of these fellas but, as a supporter, we've been through terrible days here and there's only so much of that you can keep taking,” Gilroy added.  

"Today, no matter what happened out there, we were going to get the result, to be honest. That's the attitude we had all week. We weren't just happy getting to a final. We wanted to push on and win it.

"We felt that maybe running at Kerry in the last 20 minutes might yield some dividends and we had some guys on the bench that could do that. Kevin (McManamon) was obviously one of those.

“Even when there was only three minutes left I felt that we would create the goal chances with the guys we had on the pitch. We always felt, irrespective of the score, that we were going to finish this game out and we would see if we came out the wrong side of it."