ALL ON BOARD!
Gilroy insists Dublin are as united as ever
DUBLIN hurling manager Pat Gilroy insisted there was no dressing room divide to heal after the high panel turnover and turbulent reign of his predecessor Ger Cunningham.
Former All-Star attacker Danny Sutcliffe is one of a number of high-profile players who have rejoined the squad following the appointment of the St Vincent’s man, who master-minded the county’s All-Ireland title breakthrough in football back in 2011.
After Dublin cruised to victory against Meath at Abbotstown on Wednesday night in what was his first official competitive fixture in charge, Gilroy dismissed the idea of there being any rifts to heal in terms of the bunch of players who have committed to the cause.
‘They’re a group who have committed to training and have trained very hard for the bits that we have done. It hasn’t been an issue. There hasn’t been a ripple of anything. There was nothing to heal.
‘When you talk to lads who were in good form last year, they didn’t get the results they wanted but any fella that has come back is going to have to earn his place and he’s going to have to work as hard as the rest of the squad, so there’s no issues.
‘Guys want to have the best players playing and they’re quite clear on that.’
Johnny McCaffrey is another notable return after not being involved last year. The Lucan Sarsfields man captained Dublin to National League honours in 2011 and a first Leinster title in 52 years in 2013. His clubmate Peter Kelly — like Sutcliffe, a former AllStar — is also back involved, though Gilroy explains how a core group of players are currently in rehab mode.
‘We have an emergency ward of 10! To be honest, we took a very conscious decision in November that anyone who was carrying any sort of an injury, any kind of niggly thing that they were carrying from game-to-game, that they would go off and get it sorted. So there was 10 or 11 of them that we just bit the bullet and said “right, we’re not going to have you limping from game to game”.
‘So there are about 10 guys who are in that boat, the likes of Eamonn Dillon, Peter Kelly... fellas like that who will be back with us in the next two weeks. It was worth doing that to get it right so that they were fit for the year.’
On McCaffrey, he said: ‘He’s great. Fellas like him, with his attitude and his commitment, those guys don’t shirk anything. They’re still mad hungry for hurling. They want success and they give their best the whole time.’
Currently juggling two squads, it was largely a second string selection that put Meath to the sword on Wednesday night before Dublin travel to play Tipperary in a challenge tomorrow just 24 hours before another Walsh Cup encounter, this time against Antrim at Parnell Park.
Given that Dublin’s summer ended in a 6-26 to 1-19 rout by Tipperary, it’s not overly surprising that he sees a tightened defence as one area for improvement, even pointing to the 14 points conceded against Meath. ‘I would say one of the areas that we need to work on — and we’re certainly not there yet — is just defensively we need to be a bit stronger. I wouldn’t be happy with what we conceded [tonight] with the amount of possession we had, so it’s an area we really need to work on.
‘And there’s other things but sure, there’s no point in giving away the state secrets.’
He actually feels Dublin were better than 2017 suggests, that championship hammering by Tipperary also coming after relegation to Division 1B following a play-off defeat by Clare. ‘I’ve seen all of the games that they played last year at this stage. But I would have gone to a couple of them and the results probably didn’t do justice to the effort they put in. ‘A lot of things just went against them and then games ran away from them. But there was an awful lot of good performances mixed into that last year. ‘There were a lot of good hurlers playing last year as well. Sometimes you can have a year like that as well, where everything goes against you. ‘And certainly you can see that the guys who were involved last year are very up for it. ‘So it’s encouraging.’ Cuala’s Leinster club triumph means that he is without the backbone of the All-Ireland holders’ team until at least mid-February when the Dublin champions take on Liam Mellows of Galway in the All-Ireland semifinal. He is not about to use their absence as an excuse, though.
‘My attitude is they’re getting a lot of quality games because they’re playing plenty of friendlies themselves. It’s great for the county when a club team is doing well. It did very well for the football team when the club sides were starting to win All-Irelands. Any success is good.
‘And for us, it just gives us more of an opportunity to look at players in the League and we’ll have fellas who have hopefully won another All-Ireland coming back to us at the end of March.
‘So I don’t see it as a problem.’