Importance of leadership axis to prevent Gavin making wholesale changes

Kilkenny and Fenton setting standard in four-in-a-row push, missing only a few minutes since 2015

IF THERE was any doubt about the protagonists for Dublin’s drive for four in a row since 2015 an analysis of championship ‘time in action’ gives the clearest insight. Stephen Cluxton stands apart, ever-present until a recent injury sustained during the Leinster semi-final with Longford forced him out of that game and the subsequent Leinster final with

Laois.

James McCarthy’s contribution could never be underestimated but the nature of his game has led to injuries that have forced him to sit out three of the 25 games on the current run.

Jonny Cooper has missed just last year’s Leinster final against Kildare, while Dean Rock has started every game.

But when it comes to clocking up the minutes, no one has gone further than Ciaran Kilkenny and Brian Fenton, Dublin’s now established leadership axis. No two players can dictate the tempo and direction of a game quite like Fenton and Kilkenny and, consequently, that’s why Jim Gavin is loath to remove either from the action at any time. Fenton still has that 100pc winning championship record, dating back to his debut against Longford in the 2015 Leinster championship. If we take it that there have been 1,750 minutes of action in that time, not including added time at the end of either half, Fenton has been present for all but 28 of those minutes due to being substituted in the last quarter of five games. A black card against Donegal in the 2016 All-Ireland quarter-final came seven minutes into added time at the end of the second half.

While Kilkenny has been off the field for slightly less of normal time (with added time incorporated he rises above Fenton), 1,715 minutes, his unbroken sequence of action dates back to the second half of the 2015 All-Ireland quarter-final against Fermanagh, which he sat out in its entirety, one of only two times since 2015 that he has been replaced.

Since then he has played every minute, 1,470 in total, of all 21 games with the exception of that brief spell at the end of last year’s All-Ireland final when he was black-carded, again deep into injury time. Having Kilkenny on the field at all times is of paramount importance.

Everyone, it seems, is dispensable in this Dublin setup, but some may be a little less dispensable than others.

And therein lies the choice for the Dublin manager Gavin and his selectors this weekend – what to do with this hugely influential duo?

This year Fenton and Kilkenny are the only Dublin players to feature in every minute of all five championship games.

While they’ve been engaged in so many mismatches in recent years, this is Dublin’s first championship game where the result is of no consequence to future progress, something they have faced a few times in recent league campaigns.

They had already qualified for the league final in 2016 when they travelled to Carrickon-Shannon to play Roscommon in a final league game.

Gavin used a number of fringe players on that occasion but, notably, Fenton and Rock were selected while Kilkenny came off the bench as things got tight to help push Dublin over the line by a point.

Earlier this year Dublin effectively had two games to spare ahead of a league final against Galway and while changes were made for the final game against Monaghan in Croke Park, which they lost, the team still featured seven starters from their last championship game in Omagh, among them Fenton and Rock.

That was the only league game Kilkenny sat out from the start while Fenton had his break for the first half in Pearse Stadium for the regulation game with Galway a week earlier.

Dublin have used 26 players in the championship this year, 20 of whom have started.

With so little game time after injury Cian O’Sullivan and Jack McCaffrey can expect to start this weekend against Roscommon, so too John Small who has only featured in two of the five championship games.

Colm Basquel, Paul Flynn and Kevin McManamon are others who can also expect to feature without too much being taken from the shape of the team.

Cormac Costello will also be hoping for what would only be his second championship start. He’ll certainly want to break a sequence of three games where he has been introduced in the 46th minute each time.

But the expectation is that Dublin won’t deviate too far from their championship team, even with a semi-final six days later.