Having romped to the league title on Sunday, Dublin are already being named as All-Ireland Champions in waiting in some quarters. Can they be stopped? Two JOEs argue the case.
Sean Nolan says… We’re heading into a long, hopefully hot, summer of sporting excess, with the only guarantee being Dublin’s success in the GAA Football Championship.
As a sports fan, you spend your life looking forward. Okay, you might spend a few minutes despairing over a defeat, or talking it over with your mates in the pub afterwards but there is always the next game, the next season, the next manager. There is always that hope, that uncertainty, that keeps you hooked.
So, while we will still be glued to every round of the Football Championship, starting with Mayo’s trip to New York real soon, we have never been so sure of the destiny of Sam before the big throw-in.
Last spring I picked Dublin, a little tentatively, to win back the All-Ireland. The more I saw of them the more sure I was so by the time the final rolled around, I was certain they would do for Mayo and so it came to pass.
Since then, the GAA axis has tilted even further in their favour. I can’t recall the last time the bookies had a team priced at Evens for a football title in April, and you know what, I still think it might be a bit of value.
There are two planks upon which Dublin’s nailed on retention of Sam are built. The first is the drop off in the other big counties. Mayo’s window, I fear, may have closed. The shuffling of Keith Higgins into the forwards is a sign of their problems on that side of the ball and defensively they have been shocking in the League. Their last two games, against Dublin and Derry, were very worrying and we just can’t see them lifting themselves for another charge at the mountain, even with a cakewalk through Connacht.
Donegal showed in their Division 2 league final defeat to Monaghan that they too may have slipped past their peak while teams like Tyrone, Cork and Derry still have a way to go to be taken as real contenders.
Kerry, of course, are the wild card but robbed of Gooch, and possibly now Kieran Donaghy for a serious chunk of the summer too, they have to be seen as outsiders.
So that is half the foundation of my belief, the other lies in the Dublin squad itself. Already a fearsome panel, the team has been further bolstered this term. In addition to significant improvement to the likes of Eoghan O’Gara, they have Alan Brogan back in the fold. Diarmuid Connolly is playing the best football of his life while Bernard Brogan has started the season just like he ended the last, in superb style. Footballer of the Year Michael Dara MacAuley is still the most complete midfielder in the game while Paul Flynn is one of the top five players in any position in the game.
Off the bench they can bring Kevin McManamon, Ciaran Reddin and Michael Fitzsimons, while a whole host of Under-21 stars were not involved at all in the League final and they still cruised to victory past Derry.
In any other county, the loss of rising star Ciaran Kilkenny would hurt their plans but Dublin have continued to climb upwards, looking stronger with every game. They will certainly face stiffer tests this summer than they did in the League final, but not until they hit the last eight.
From there, they will need to play three good games to retain their crown. That is simply too short an order for a team of this depth and power. Their only weak link lies in a potential season-ending injury to Stephen Cluxton, the one man they can’t fully replace. But the odds on that are far too slim for their opponents to pin their dreams to.
The summer will undoubtedly be filled with thrills, spills, great games and the odd upset. But come September 21, we firmly believe that only one team will be in the Hogan Stand collecting the big one.
Conor Heneghan says… Hype is a word that is never far away when the Dublin footballers are concerned, but in a break from the norm this year the hype around Jim Gavin’s men is not self-generated, but seemingly the product of concern from other counties that there will be no stopping the Boys in Blue this season.
And from the evidence of the past few weeks, you can’t really blame them. After a league campaign disrupted by injuries to key players and experimentation with some new ones, the Dubs found a new gear when it came to the knockout stages, or at least from half-time in the semi-final against Cork onwards.
Two minutes into the second half of that game, Dublin trailed by 10 points, yet onto win by seven, a 17-point turnaround in just over half an hour against a side ranked second favourites behind the Dubs to win Sam this year. Subsequently, the final against Derry was a non-event and if anything, the 15-point winning margin flattered the losers.
Dublin’s last two games are illustrative of the type of hammerings they have dished out regularly in the Leinster Championship in recent years, not against the best teams in the country, even if it is only ‘the league,’ an argument which in itself is gaining less and less credence in recent years because of how seriously it is taken by the top teams.
So having produced a mountain of evidence justifying why the Dubs are deserved even-money favourites to win Sam for the second year on the trot, how in God’s name can I go about coming up with reasons to suggest that there is even the slightest chance that some team might prevent them from doing so? Well, here goes nothing…
Complacency
Dublin kicked 17 wides on Sunday and there were even times during the game that it was beginning to look a little too easy for them. Ridiculous as it might sound to call a team that won by 15 points complacent, the signs were certainly there and while Derry mightn’t have been able to exploit them on Sunday, there’s nothing to say that another team won’t during the summer.
Looking at the Leinster championship schedule, there’s every chance that Dublin will arrive in the All-Ireland quarter-finals slightly undercooked and could be ripe for what would admittedly be the scalp of all scalps, no matter who’s going to face them in the last eight. Clutching at straws, perhaps, but a slight possibility all the same.
Possibility of peaking too soon
It’s hard to say whether Dublin have actually peaked yet because there were questions marks about them right up until the second half of the semi-final against Cork. With some big players (e.g Bernard Brogan) returning and some established ones playing out of their skins (Diarmuid Connolly, Eoghan O’Gara), however, they certainly look as good as they have for some time.
Can they maintain that form throughout the summer? Worryingly for everyone else, the answer is probably and even if some individuals are flagging, no county has anywhere near the amount of alternative options they have just gagging to get off the bench. That said, no team is immune to injury or key players losing form and it will be interesting to see how the Champs react if affected by one or both of those factors.
Improvement by teams around them
I might be biased – and Lord knows I have done my best to promote Mayo’s cause in opinion columns on this site in the past – but despite plenty of evidence to the contrary during the spring, I believe that my own county will be Dublin’s closest challengers again this season and would love to see them get another crack at the Dubs in Croke Park later in the summer. Hopelessly optimistic? Maybe, but it’s not the first or the last time that charge would have been levelled at a Mayo GAA fan and we’re not about to change now.
A new-look Cork team, meanwhile, a team who are likely to get better and better, showed (for 40 minutes at least) that they can mix it with the Dubs and I certainly wouldn’t be dismissing Kerry in spite of the inestimable loss of the Gooch.
The list of potential challengers begins to wear thin after that but those three teams in particular have huge scope for improvement and with a bit of luck and a bit of cop-on (attack Cluxton’s kickouts, nullify the midfield and for God’s sake, don’t leave the centre of the defence wide open), the potential for Dublin to be toppled remains.
Admittedly, despite my best efforts, the average supporter is still going to take a lot of convincing to believe that anyone but Dublin will lift Sam in September.
But saying the race for the All-Ireland is over as early as the end of April? That’s premature to say the least and I’m sure that a) Dublin wouldn’t be the first team to be tagged as ridiculous pre-championship favourites and not go onto win it and b) that the best teams in the chasing pack aren’t going to lie down and take their beating when they come up against the side that everyone wants to beat.
Will the Dubs be stopped? Maybe not. Can they be stopped? Absolutely.
