‘We stopped respecting what had got us to an All-ireland semi-final’
Daly admits Dublin need to rediscover their 2011 focus
SOMEWHERE, sometime last year Dublin hurling stopped ‘respecting’ what had made them league champions and All-Ireland semifinalists in 2011.
Anthony Daly recalls losing a Walsh Cup game to Laois last January and “not giving a whim about it.”
“Well we could do without the Walsh Cup probably this year,” he smugly thought to himself on the road home.
In with the big guys now, you see, insulated from the bumpy dirt tracks.
Every conservation was peppered with the next step in their natural progression and of Kilkenny in June.
The All-Ireland semi-final and league title of 2011 launched them into a place they were, in hindsight, unable to deal with and sustain.
So the lessons stack up as Daly takes Dublin into a fifth year as manager and he finds himself helplessly drawing on a well-worn psychological mantra that, in their current predicament, he finds some value in.
“I know you're sick of it being trotted out, but just to focus on what's in front of you and what you can control and the performance and not be getting ahead of yourself and buying into what people are saying.
STEP
“Ye lads (media) saying we're top three now and the next step has to be getting to an All-Ireland. Of course you're going to write that, that's your job,” he figures.
“Listening to people on the street and at work and everything and taking that in and not respecting what got us there...
“We didn't respect what got us there in 2011, what won the league and got us to an All-Ireland semi-final, we didn't respect that enough.
“We thought things would happen automatically last year. This is all hindsight now. If you had asked me this time last year... I thought we were going well.”
The alarm bells were ringing in the head, however, on the first weekend of the league when Dublin were well beaten by Galway. Even by then a certain malaise had set in and would be difficult to dislodge.
“Ultimately, though, the last match was a kick in the teeth, losing the relegation play-off where we looked to be home and hosed the first day in Tullamore, three points up going into injury-time,” recalls Daly.
“We should have closed the deal. Should have closed the deal in Ennis too (against Clare in the championship) when we were six ahead against 14 men. Didn't close it. We probably wanted the results but we didn't want to keep processing to get the results.”
Ennis was a chastening experience all round but down the town he knows so well later that night, he got the first inclination that his time might just stretch into a fifth year despite the scale of the disappointment in Cusack Park.
“It takes you a bit of time to get over it,” he says.
“Then you have four seasons done so you’re saying, ‘is it time to go away and let someone at it?’.
“That night in Ennis we only had one drink together, the boys were going back on the bus. They were to a man nearly saying, ‘Jesus, don’t make any decisions, wait’.
“So like, in fairness, I did feel they would want me back. With a summer, two months to think about it, it was maybe a case of ‘get someone new, someone with a fresh voice’.
“With a bit of time, being anxious that the players would have a meeting... you kind of wanted to know if the players wanted to change,” he admits.
“If they wanted a change – well we’ve seen too many of those things over the last 10 years, players not wanting managers and if I thought that was the case I would have walked away with no bad feeling to anyone.
“No, they came back positive and the board were positive so it was a matter of making up my own mind to see was I willing to go again.”
A new tenant for his public house between Ennis and Kilrush was found, which made another year in Dublin all the more feasible on a personal level. Without that, he couldn’t have managed it.
But the blows kept coming towards the end of last year and into early 2013. First the defection of physical fitness trainer Martin Kennedy to Jim Gavin’s football back-room team (Kennedy had worked with Gavin
before at U-21 level), then the “shock” of Tomas Brady crossing over the other side.
Ciaran Kilkenny didn’t respond to Daly’s messages, Cormac Costello and Eric Lowndes did but weren’t in a position to divide their time.
“The evening that Martin rang me, I thought, ‘will I give this up altogether, we’re getting kicked in the teeth too often’,” recalls Daly.
“Tomas was a shock. I didn't see it coming. Tomas would have come back from a long injury with the cruciate and a shoulder injury before that. I thought he was just getting back to his best form down in Ennis last year.
“He would have struggled before that. It was a blow at the time.”
But every cloud has a silver lining and Daly declares himself delighted with Ross Dunphy – Kennedy’s replacement and physical trainer to Tipperary under Declan Ryan – and the panel he has put together now.
“We met Ross and interviewed him, we met a few lads actually, but he was the standout candidate and brought a great lease of life to it, a super fella. Things happen for a reason at times,” says Daly.
Daly says he “respects” the division (1B) where Dublin find themselves now but knows they will miss the more competitive edge that the top flight brings.
“You'd rather be in Division 1A. The matches are testing. You saw fellas every day against the very best in the country,” he says.
Offaly on Saturday night in Parnell Park stokes up a rivalry that in Daly’s estimation has been simmering away off mainstream all the time.
“I think Offaly will always feel that somehow Dublin's emergence... they were maybe fancying themselves as the next threat to Kilkenny in Leinster and now there's another team coming along they way and they're there, ‘Where have this crowd come out of?'
“There's always that bit of an edge between Dublin and Offaly, I find,” Daly suggests.