What Dublin have coming is frightening
A RECENT TRIP TO PARNELL PARK WAS A REAL EYE OPENER AND LEFT ME VERY WORRIED
ANY LINGERING doubts which may have existed inside my head dissipated one evening last month at Parnell Park. I was told on the way there to keep an eye out on an emerging Dublin talent, Eoin Murchin, who was togging for Na Fianna in their senior football championship clash with St Vincent’s.
He did not disappoint. I knew nothing about him other than he has seen some very limited game-time in the Allianz League and he stood out that evening as you would expect an established inter-county player should.
He was fast, strong in the tackle, composed in possession and looked such a complete player that you could see why the football nut who had advised me to keep a watch on him believed that he could slip straight into the Dublin team if needed.
It is always a pleasure to see a good player on the make, but I won’t lie that the Kerry supporter in me was a little deflated because Murchin’s performance exposed the flawed theory doing the rounds that Dublin are a team waiting to be ambushed.
That is how all the great teams go down in the end. They believe their own hype; their egos become not so much fattened as obese by feasting on serial success while a battalion of blood hungry snipers lay crouched in the long grass primed to take them out.
That is not going to happen for the simple reason that the champions refuse to stand still, they are constantly pushing themselves and replenishing their reserves of talent is the best way to do that. And they are doing so almost with a sleight of hand. Murchin is but the latest player that you have not really heard about but you will soon. If not this summer, then next.
He is following the pathway of Brian Fenton, Brian Howard, Niall Scully and Colm Basquel, young men who have come into the team and added significant depth to an already well stocked squad.
Their capacity to bring in players of this quality is a credit to Jim Gavin’s coaching nous and to the physical conditioning regime which seems to see young Dublin talent progress at a speed which is not happening in other counties, my own included.
We keep seeing Dublin as a team that will one day just get tired, when in fact that they are an ever-evolving dynasty. That is not to say that they won’t be beaten, it is just that they won’t be beaten this year. And they are a team that right now will feel invincible, and that’s an infectious feeling. I experienced that in the mid noughties with Kerry when we won three All-Irelands in four years and the confidence which generates extends to those new players who come into the group.
The Eoin Murchins of this football world have a head start on Eoin O’Donoghue in Mayo and Jason Foley in Kerry for the simple reason that they are coming into a champion set-up, while the rest are under pressure to keep pace. And that makes the mountain of difference to the mind-set of emerging players, which goes someway to explaining why they make the step-up so easy. Look, there’s a multitude of reasons, from Stephen Cluxton’s influence, to Johnny Cooper’s leadership, to Fenton’s undiluted brilliance to Paul Mannion’s scoring menace as to why Dublin are the best team in the land. But it is the sight of players like Murchin knocking hard on Gavin’s door to be let into the team which insures that as a group the best team in the land will also be the most earnest one this summer. I could buy into the mood of the summer and peddle the line that anything is possible, but the truth eyeballing us is an obvious one and it is telling us that Dublin will be champions for the fourth year in a row. If, from a non-Dublin perspective, that sounds fatalistic, the good news is that there are a handful of counties who will believe that is not the reality.
We wish them the very best, but I can’t make a convincing case for any of them. The resilience of this Mayo team will for ever be a source of wonder, but it will always be undermined by their lack of depth
With the exception of O’Donoghue, we have not seen a single new face in a squad far too dependent on players with ticking time clocks.
If Andy Moran does not replicate his player of the year form – and history tells us that will not happen – they will be an even more diminished attacking force, while they head into the battle today most likely in the absence of their best player, Lee Keegan.
Kerry, for all the talk of their talent, have holes around the field, most notably in the full-back line and midfield that will need filling.
Anthony Maher, who has been a great servant but who has had to battle hard against injuries, is back in the panel because Eamonn Fitzmaurice is shy of the options around the middle of the field, which now does not really extend between his start pair of Jack Barry and David Moran.
In all my years with Kerry, options in the middle were never an issue, with the likes of Darragh, William Kirby, Donal Daly, Tommy Griffin, Seamus Scanlon and Bryan Sheehan all queuing up to play there.
I have never seen Kerry as threadbare in the engine room and that for me puts paid to any notion that Kerry can pull an All-Ireland out of its magic hat in summer.
Tyrone simply lack the cutting edge, even allowing for the promotion of Lee Brennan to their attack to win this thing.
Galway may prove to be the most dangerous challengers to Dublin – they are well organised defensively where the addition of Sean Andy O’Ceallaigh has been transformative but they also play to a gameplan which is tailored for their personnel.
They also have Michael Daly, who missed the league through injury, to come into an attack which has quality, not least in its leader Damien Comer. But our faith in Galway is based on one league campaign, in which they were still bested by a 14-man Dublin team.
There is still much to look forward to, not least the potential feast of football which the Super 8s promise to deliver, which I expect will be made up of Dublin, Mayo, Kerry, Galway, Tyrone, Monaghan, Donegal and Roscommon.
In effect, pretty much all Division 1 teams who are a level above the rest. But in the end, nothing will disguise the reality that Dublin are in a division all of their own.