Revenge no motivation for Dubs’ captain Sutcliffe as Laois loom large
IT’S BEEN so long now that Danny Sutcliffe no longer sees Dublin’s shock All-Ireland hurling qualifier defeat to Laois as a reference point for his team as they refine preparations for a rematch in a Leinster quarter-final in two-anda-half weeks, the first in the 2020 championship.
The venue has still be finalised but with limited floodlit venues available to Leinster Council, Croke Park or O’Moore Park in Portlaoise will most probably host a game that Sutcliffe doesn’t see as a revenge mission for their July 2019 reversal.
“You can’t be looking in the rearview mirror like that,” he says. “That is a distant memory now. We had a set of league games earlier in the year, we had one against Clare where we did not perform.
“We had a couple of positives against Wexford in Croke Park and it is just dissecting those performances, collectively and individually. It is stuff that we are trying to correct.”
Sutcliffe has been made Dublin captain in a year where he is thankful to be discussing the prospect of games at all.
“My club (St Jude’s) was delighted that I got it (captaincy), but like everyone in the 35 we have, we still have to deliver individually and you are still looking for others; like when Chris (Crummey) was captain he was still looking for us to step up and help him out and he is still driving us forward in every session as well.”
One he knows he can depend on is Conal Keaney who will extend his inter-county career to a 20-year span in the coming weeks, having debuted in 2001.
“He looks after himself really well and he’s obviously a real competitor. He goes back and plays dual every year as well and, as we all know, that is no easy feat for anybody. Ballyboden St Enda’s are a top Division 1 club in both so there is real competitiveness and he just really wants to do well, but obviously at the same time, especially at his age and he has a couple of injuries, he looks after himself extremely well. There is no real off-season for him. He constantly keeps himself in good shape.”
Croke Park would be Sutcliffe’s preference for the Laois game, purely from a safety point of view with the spacious dressing-rooms available on both sides of the ground (Portlaoise is also well equipped with multiple dressing-rooms).
“Each team would have two dressing-rooms under the Hogan and two dressing-rooms under the Cusack to prepare, that way everyone has a decent bit of space and nobody is under pressure. We have family members at home depending on us to adhere to guidelines so I think that’s why Croke Park would work. It’s nothing about the lights or the pitch or anything like that, just that we’d have two full (dressing-rooms).”
Nor does the prospect of a first championship game under lights unnerve him in any way.
“It would be unusual obviously, I understand Davy Fitzgerald’s point that championships are normally in good weather or a mid-afternoon game but you have to make concessions with the current situation, so whether it’s Saturday nights under lights we’ll take that no problem.”