New Dublin are just the same in all the ways that matter
AS WE stand on the brink of the championship, the chill that is sending a shiver down the spine of Gaelic football’s chasing pack has nothing to do with the grim Irish spring climate.
There is a pervasive sense that Dublin have moved so far ahead of the rest that they have already thieved the season of its intrigue, killing all hope for others.
If you are hoping I have 10 reasons up my sleeve as to why that is not the case, then sorry to disappoint you but I have seen nothing out there to make me think any different.
My biggest fear is that by this evening, Dublin may have already extinguished the diminishing hope that this thing is not done before it has even started.
This is not just a league final today, this is a showdown between the best team in the land and the closest team to them.
Outside of Dublin, Derry are the only other team which can be said, definitively, to be a better version of themselves than they were 12 months ago.
They have gone from having an 18-man panel to a genuine 26-man one.
They have developed options in every line, from the likes of Diarmuid Baker and Donncha Gilmore in defence, the return of Emmett Bradley as a midfield reserve, and the addition of Cormac Murphy to attack.
Last weekend, Lachlan Murray, who has been deep in the fringes for the past few seasons, revealed his talent with a couple of booming points and a jaw-dropping goal, which saw him drop the ball from his right hand to his left foot to defy an acute angle.
You don’t get scores like that without being gifted.
The view, and this was their greatest weakness up to this season, that they are a one-man band in attack has been dispelled, with Shane McGuigan now having a
genuine supporting cast around him to lift that load.
Not only are Derry better this year, they have so much more to play for than Dublin this afternoon. A win today would not only validate the progress that has been made in Mickey Harte and Gavin Devlin’s first season, it would give the team the belief they desperately need.
For all that they achieved under Rory Gallagher, the one thing missing was taking down a big scalp in a sudden-death Croke Park game.
Who have they beaten in that time? Offaly in a Division 3 final, Clare and Cork in All-Ireland quarter-finals? Not only would they not be able to dine out on those results, they would hardly be served by the local chippy van.
And look who they have lost to – Galway and Kerry in All-Ireland semi-finals and, lest we forget, last year’s four-goal mauling by Dublin in the Division 2 final.
If Derry come up shy in another heavyweight contest in Croke Park, then it will be even more difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that this is a very good team but one that ultimately is just not good enough.
So here is the thing – we know the team that has won back-toback Ulster championships are even better now, we know that their need is greater and, yet, we also know that they are not going to win today.
Worse than that, I fear that they may struggle to keep the ball kicked out to Dublin today and I would not be surprised if the AllIreland champions don’t win this by a double-digit margin.
Why am I so sure? Especially since Harte picked a Derry-lite team in the regular-round match which he knew they could afford to lose to Dublin?
The advantage gained by having Conor Glass available – and it will be a mouth-watering prospect to see him going head-to-head with Brian Fenton – is almost totally erased by the fact that Croke Park is Dublin’s killing field.
And if they did feel a little vulnerable there for a couple of seasons, that was only because in 2021 and 2022 they were going through a transition process under Dessie Farrell that was misinterpreted as the beginning of the end.
The truth is that they are right at the start again. The line kept being peddled was that last year was all about getting the old band back together. But this feels more like it is a brand new band, capable of making the same sweet music.
Only rare talents, the likes of the David Cliffords and Peter Canavans, can go from zero to hero in inter-county football, the rest of us get to serve our apprenticeships.
Which means that this latest iteration of Dublin was hiding in plain sight, the introduction of the likes of Eoin Murchan, Lee Gannon, Seán Bugler and Colm Basquel over the past few years has revealed them to be blue-chip players. And the same thing is happening now with the likes of Theo Clancy, Cian Murphy, Ross McGarry, Killian McGinnis and Lorcan O’Dell.
And that is before you even name-check their generational talents like Fenton, Ciarán Kilkenny and Con O’Callaghan or consider that Stephen Cluxton, James McCarthy, Michael Fitzsimons, Jack McCaffrey and Paul Mannion will come back into the frame.
More than anything, as personnel changes, the selfless mind-set remains the same, underlined by the way Basquel and O’Callaghan spurned clear chances to take their own goal last weekend to set up O’Dell and Niall Scully respectively because they had even a better one.
They are different, but they are the exact same.
The prize they will chase today is not the league title, but in reminding the team that is closest to them that they are as far away as ever.