Dubs must wise up if they are to get to Kerry’s level
PAUL FLYNN told a Dublin radio station he didn’t believe his team need to change their game. ‘I think if you look back on the year, if you look back on the whole season of last year, we were the best team,’ claimed Flynn. ‘We played the best football; we just didn’t win the Championship.’
He was one of the honourable exceptions
to the headless attempts Dublin made to reel in Donegal during the second half of last year’s All-Ireland semi-final.
But Dublin scattered all before them in the weakest Leinster Championship in memory, before collapsing into an incoherent mess as soon as they were confronted by a team on their level.
Any county can have a rotten day and Jim Gavin’s men deserve to be counted among the favourites for the Sam Maguire, but to claim they were the best team in Ireland last year is to commit an act of forlorn self-deception.
The best team wins the All-Ireland, and Kerry are shaping up as formidable defenders of their crown.
In defeat to Mayo a week ago there were tendrils of true promise curling through the cold Killarney air.
Tommy Walsh looked lean and powerful, and his brief time at midfield, against established figures in Seamus O’Shea and Donal Vaughan, made the possibility of a partnership with David Moran seem strong.
Jack Sherwood was aggressive and mobile on the half-back line, and Darran O’Sullivan, Kieran Donaghy, James O’Donoghue and Colm Cooper will all return to form the most impressive forward unit in the country.
Flynn must know Kerry were last year’s best – and that they will be the most obvious obstacle to Dublin’s return to the top.