Our hunger for more silverware isn’t sourced in self-obsession
Dublin have the humility to learn from the past, insists O’Sullivan
They fancy themselves a bit more than they should do. They are acting like superstars, like Tiger Woods. I won’t name them but there are a few of the Dublin players who really fancy themselves. They don’t give candid interviews. I met a Dublin player recently and this guy thinks he’s Lionel Messi and Messi would have a bit more charm. It’s unbelievable. I just thought, ‘You big-headed p***k’ – Eamon Dunphy, RTE 2FM Game On, September 22
WHEN the madness ended on the Thursday after the All-Ireland final, Cian O’Sullivan stepped back into his accountant’s shoes and got stuck back in.
‘It was surreal, really. One minute you are out there celebrating this huge thing and the next thing you know you are back in the office and you have a pressing deadline to meet,’ he explains.
Far from the VIP-sectioned bars that some imaginations reside in, the life of being a five-time Gaelic football champion drips of normalcy from O’Sullivan’s vantage point. Now that the team he plays for has crashed through football’s ceiling of greatness by winning a third All-Ireland in a row, the one and only stick left to beat them with is the manners one.
No-one doubts how good they are, but there are enough out there who doubt how nice they are.
‘Being humble and honest are very important values to this team and it is disappointing to hear that some people don’t feel that is the case but it is definitely not something that we would get offended by or even think about,’ O’Sullivan remarks.
‘Once you start reading what Eamon Dunphy has to say about you, then I think that you are going down a slippery slope. If you get emotional or offended by guys who have controversial agendas… I really don’t think we would read too much about what they have to say about our team,’ says O’Sullivan
And yet it hangs. In the main, the perception is that, as a collective, their personality is robotic in nature — an extension of the process which they lean on when delivering sustained excellence on the field.
It is a perception that has been filtered, in the main, by their cool and clinical engagement with the media.
That relationship is managed just as tightly as the football one.
A few years back a Dublin player attended a sponsor’s gig where one journalist asked those players in attendance to fill in one of those questionnaires often found in the health-and-lifestyle sections of a paper. It was, quite literally, bread and butter stuff— based on sleep, exercise and diet. The three players from the other counties present at the event completed the exercise with no fuss but before it was handed back by the Dublin player it was scanned by a member of Jim Gavin’s management team and visibly edited. It summed up the micro-management that Dublin prides itself on, but it also revealed an attention to detail bordering on paranoia when dealing with the fourth estate. Providing good copy and tasty sound-bites is right down at the bottom of their list for a good reason. ‘We are all amateurs at the end of the day but there is a professional expectancy there,’ explains O’Sullivan. ‘We want to make sure our minds are right and are focused going into games and to do that you have to steer clear of any distractions. ‘The media is a big potential distraction and for that reason we try and control what’s within our control and that is how we train, how we play. ‘We can’t control the media so from that perspective we are mindful of not getting too involved in it,’ adds O’Sullivan. Then again it could be argued that they are merely learning the lessons from a fallow past and, that being the case, they have an eager teacher in Gavin. Gavin made his bow with Dublin in the 1992/93 National League campaign, just months after they were rocked to their foundations when losing the AllIreland final to Donegal.
The crude post mortem to that defeat concluded that Dublin, who had seen some of their players model outfits for then sponsors Arnotts on the week of the final, were more concerned with public profile than playing ball.
It didn’t matter whether it was true or not, but Dublin developed a reputation for being media darlings rather than hard-nosed footballers thereafter and that is undoubtedly an element of the culture which Gavin has changed.
It is showing, too. This group is not known for being flash because if they were, it simply would not be tolerated.
‘Within our unit, the 35 lads on the squad and the management, we are cocooned in an environment where we are not going to get distracted by the stuff that is going on, whether that is soaking up the praise of family and friends, or reading the papers, or listening to what people are saying on the radio, we steer clear of all that,’ explains O’Sullivan.
‘You are a little bit ignorant as to what is going on outside and because of that it does not really sink in the significance of winning three-in-a-row.
‘It has probably not really hit home to me yet and it is probably something I hope doesn’t.
‘I hope we keep the mindset that we have and that maybe in later years when I hang up the boots I can look back and say “that was special” but for now the enormity of it has not really sunk in.’
It is that mindset which has made them exceptional and serial champions.
The line peddled early this year — not least when they drew three League games during the spring and ended up losing to Kerry in the final — that they had been reeled back into the game’s pack.
The truth is that they have always seen themselves as part of that pack, which is why they have been able to reset so quickly and go hard time and again.
And they would not have been able to do that without showing the humility in the first instance to take on board lessons from their own past.
‘We had the experience of doing it in 2011 and doing it in 2013, and I guess without having the experience of 2012 and ’14, there is no way that we would have been able to put together back-to-backs and now this three-in-a-row if we had not come through and learned the lessons of those years,’ explains O’Sullivan.
‘Once you win an All-Ireland, it is such a massive goal reached and in 2011 it was 16 years since we had done it so once you get there it is very hard to reset and go again.
‘You are just thinking we ticked that box, we achieved that goal, it is really hard to do that again.
‘Because of that the whole threein-a-row thing has never been about winning All-Irelands, it has been about playing the best football that we can possibly play.
‘That is where the motivation has been rather than on just lifting Sam on the third Sunday in September and with that mindset, the performances have come and the results have come.
‘I think that is the key thing, you don’t get to that point where you say “that’s the best we can play, that’s done now, we can sit back because we have achieved that goal”.
‘Instead you are constantly striving to achieve the next goal, you are constantly moving on.’
And that is the language of those who fancy a challenge rather than fancy themselves.
Cian O’Sullivan was speaking this week at the launch of the All Ireland Smiles campaign for GSK’s Sensodyne toothpaste and Corsodyl mouthwash