Dubs can still be a force but All-Ireland is beyond them
Blues lacking leaders while key players are in decline
WE HAVE joy, we have fun, we have Dublin on the run,’ a section of the Kerry supporters in the Austin Stack Park stand serenaded their visitors last Saturday night. Whatever about winning the AllIreland, we certainly have chance at ever winning the national song contest.
However, the Kerry football folk that are rooted in reality will be painfully aware that beating this version of the Dublin team was nothing to sing or dance about.
And, make no mistake, there is a better version coming down the road soon, perhaps even this Saturday night when they take on Mayo in a game which they desperately need to win to ease fears – and it is almost unthinkable to write this – of being in Division 2 next year.
I have a feeling they will lose to Mayo but my gut tells me they will gain enough momentum at the business end of the Allianz League to scrape to safety.
I say that with the benefit of experience.
In 2013 we were on pretty much the same path Dublin are on now, a group who had seen several of its leaders depart the scene in previous seasons and with a new manager overseeing the transition.
Not only did we lose our first four games in the League, we lost them miserably. The 12 points we scored against Kildare was the most we managed in that horrible run with, for the record, 1-6 against Mayo, 0-6 against Donegal and, wait for it, 0-4 against Dublin.
RTÉ even dispatched Marty Morrissey down to us amid loose talk that Éamonn Fitzmaurice was destined for one of the shortest reigns as Kerry manager.
Six months later and we came within a Michael Darragh Macauley flick of the ball to Kevin McManamon from beating Dublin in what was acclaimed as one of the great All-Ireland semi-finals and 12 months after that, we claimed the Sam Maguire Cup.
Of course there was concern within the group at the time but it was limited to fears we might not retain our top-flight status and not that we were about to topple over some cliff edge.
Back then we had a fair idea why we were not scoring because, for a period of that spring, we were without Colm Cooper, Declan O’Sullivan, Kieran Donaghy and Paul Geaney, but we knew they would be coming back.
In the exact same way, I don’t believe the Dublin camp is as traumatised by a couple of early League defeats as those who are rushing to condemn them as make-weights in this year’s Championship.
And this is not the latest chapter of cute Kerry hoorism. It is the only conclusion to be made when you consider who has to return.
I make it eight key players, Mike Fitzsimons, Jonny Cooper, Eoin Murchan, James McCarthy, Robbie McDaid, Paddy Small, Cormac Costello and, last but hardly least, Con O’Callaghan.
Take those and add them to the regulars that played in Tralee and you are looking at a very different – and far better – team.
Now, as proof I am being an honest broker, I don’t believe even with all of those players available they will win the All-Ireland.
It is a possibility that they could squeeze one out, because within that group there are truly great players who are born winners, but I don’t believe there is enough of them.
EVEN if they all stay healthy, Dublin are looking at having a really good starting 15, but after that they have serious issues. There is a great irony in that because the teams who ran them closest over the last decade, Mayo and Kerry, had really good starting 15s too but nothing else, and ultimately Dublin reminded them every time that games are won by the group and not just those who make the cut after training on Thursday evening.
It wasn’t just that Dublin regularly had solution-solving and game-changing players on the bench in the likes of Philly McMahon, Cian O’Sullivan, Diarmuid Connolly, Bernard Brogan and, of course, McManamon, they were also hard-nosed experienced winners.
Soccer pundit Alan Hansen was wrong when he said you don’t win anything with kids, but if you are using your bench at the business end of matches, talented rookies won’t provide the kind of composure that was Dublin’s trademark in closing out games.
Even with a very good starting 15, the current Dublin outfit is not even close to the great starting teams that Jim Gavin put out.
I am going to state the obvious here, but McDaid is no Jack McCaffrey, Small no Paul Mannion, Costello no Bernard Brogan and I could go on. I will make one exception, Evan Comerford’s performance off the kicking tee in the most appalling conditions last weekend was something to behold and suggests they still have a quarterback option following Stephen Cluxton’s exit.
The evidence that the Dubs had come back to the pack was there even before last year and you do wonder would they have won a sixth title in row if 2020 was a regular Championship. This year, they may struggle to keep pace with those at the front of that pack.
Dublin will also fear that some of those great players may already be in decline. I am thinking here of the likes of Cooper, Fitzsimons and even James McCarthy – and the manner in which Daniel Flynn burgled the ball off the latter in last year’s Leinster final still jars.
I am not being ageist here, but if a team in need of a reboot is leaning on those with the greatest mileage, then decline is terminal because that ploy has no future.
Another worry for Dessie Farrell is that those still at their playing peak can be impacted when the standards around them fall.
Brian Fenton has not played at the levels we have been used to over the last 12 months because it may just be that he feels those around him are not what they were. Last Saturday, it seemed as if he was a ‘cheating’ midfielder, seekingt to drive the attack rather than the engine room. In trying to take on more, he is delivering less.
Dublin are not heading for a cliff edge, but neither are they destined for the mountain top.