John Fogarty: Private Dublin turn from the hunters to the hunted

EPIC FAIL: Innisfails GAA club in Balgriffin played host to a Dublin training session last week. The All-Ireland champions have made a habit of operating in secrecy, but they were left brutally exposed this week in the media. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

You may have noticed the movie Heat was on RTÉ 2 Saturday night, the first time Robert De Niro and Al Pacino ever shared the screen at the same time.

Aside from their famous face-off in the diner, there’s a great scene where Al Pacino and his fellow LAPD detectives, having surveilled De Niro and his criminal gang apparently case a robbery in an oil refinery and a scrapyard, go to check what exactly they were looking at. The policemen are flummoxed until Pacino’s character twigs it: “You know what they’re looking at? The LAPD. The Police Department. We just got made.”

It was a classic hunted becomes the hunter moment, something that brought us back to events on the Malahide Road three days earlier when Dublin, who for so long have pointed the camera at others, had the lens turned in their direction.

What are we talking about? Well, no other county team watches opponents like Dublin. In 2014, then Kerry manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice spoke of the breadth of their scouting network, recalling their representatives being at a Munster semi-final. 

“Dublin’s resources are phenomenal. And I mean phenomenal. In Ennis, there was a member of the backroom team up from us — not a member of management team, mind you — with an iPad doing a statistical analysis of a Munster semi-final between Cork and Clare. Now, that was opposition well down the road for them. It shows the level they are at.”

Prior to their infamous Leinster quarter-final in 2017, then Carlow manager Turlough O’Brien spoke of the watching brief Dublin had on them:

I’m sure they were at our National League games; there was two of them at Dr Cullen Park last Sunday. I’m sure (Dublin scout) John Courtney was looking in through Paul Broderick’s window to see what he was eating for his breakfast! They know everything about us.”

The importance of opposition analysis to Dublin raised its head in 2018 when Jim Gavin did not speak to RTÉ after two games when the national broadcaster refused a request to furnish Dublin with TV footage of a league game involving another team. RTÉ stressed they were not the rights holders — eir Sport and TG4 were.

The row was resolved a couple of weeks later but Gavin did make a pointed remark when he spoke about how Dublin contested Michael Fitzsimons’ suspension arising from the league win over Mayo.

“We’d footage from eir Sport, great footage, to show conclusively that it wasn’t dangerous play.”

Two years ago, Dublin recruited strength and conditioning coach Shane Malone who had worked with Mayo, the team they had beaten in two of the three previous All-Ireland finals.

Malone was obviously chosen on merit but picking from their nearest rivals was interesting.

Last week is not the first time Dublin’s secrecy has upset the GAA. In 2013, Donegal’s Paddy McBrearty was allegedly bitten by a Dublin player in a league game but nothing came of it due to a lack of co-operation.

“Leadership was required from the counties involved to protect the good name of the Association,” said GAA director general Páraic Duffy. “It is disappointing that it was not forthcoming.”

Five years ago, Duffy also hit out at the omerta in the Dublin and Armagh camps following an incident in a 2015 challenge game: “Group solidarity is one thing; a code of silence that condones violence is quite another.”

Also in 2015, the GAA voted to order counties to release to Croke Park their finalised 26-man match-day panels for Championship the Wednesday prior to games. Managers making changes to the squad risked a sideline ban. Although it had no real effect on teams being published, it did prompt Dublin not to publish their substitutes list to the media. However, the match programme was leaked on more than one occasion, which greatly upset the Dublin camp.

Putting a steward on the gates of their training centre in St Clare’s is clearly not the only example of how the Dublin senior football group value their privacy.

And with good reason, you might say, as six-time All-Ireland champions, the team everybody wants to know about, and if what happened last Wednesday is anything to go by as much as it was a slip.

The activities in Innisfails GAA club is not what this great Dublin group are all about but because they have been pulling the curtain further across themselves they will find it difficult to shake the perception that they don’t have something to hide.

Nobody expects glasnost in Glasnevin and winners are not expected to divulge much.

Jonny Cooper, one of those photographed in Innisfails, illustrated that last month when he spoke of shadowing professional sports teams but not offering them much about the inner workings of his Dublin team. “They were disappointed and it was a very short conversation, I had to deflect on that!”

But there is little room for aversion when you’ve been made.

GAA staying close to stay safe

Ulster GAA secretary Brian McAvoy. Photo by Oliver McVeigh/Sportsfile

Ulster GAA secretary Brian McAvoy’s comments against the open draw in Monday’s Belfast Telegraph made for interesting reading.

“Whatever the merits of an open draw, an open draw in Covid times is absolutely bonkers,” he said. “For the times that are in it, you have to keep it within your own province. Any suggestion of having an open draw with Covid, it has no logic, it makes no sense and it undermines the public health message as well.”

On the face of it, McAvoy’s argument is a strong one. It is expected to be revealed this week that hurling’s Division 1 and 2 will be broken up geographically as the four National Football League divisions will be.

Proximity is key for public health and pocket reasons — no county board wants to be footing excessive mileage and sustenance bills right now when the cupboards are bare.

However, look at how the football leagues are and hurling leagues will be broken up and there are still going to be long journeys for several counties. Armagh, Donegal, Monaghan, and Tyrone may comprise Division 1 North, but Down and Mayo are in Division 2 North and there are criss-cross country ventures ahead in Division 4 North. There will also be large distances for those involved in the hurling championships from the Joe McDonagh Cup down.

If staying close was of utmost importance, then Kerry would be playing in the Munster senior hurling championship for this season only, but the GAA have to maintain integrity in their competitions.

Providing league games between counties as close as possible geographically and competitively at least avoids riskier challenge games.

All going well, August All-Ireland finals are on the agenda again

The Sam Maguire and Liam MacCarthy cups. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

By the end of this week we should know when the All-Ireland senior hurling and football finals are scheduled and, all going well with the vaccination roll-out, the exclusive county championship period can commence for clubs.

Second-guessing the GAA’s games administration department is a perilous exercise so read on with that in mind but it would seem the Allianz Leagues could start from May 8/9 for hurling and May 15/16 for football.

They are expected to run for no more than five weekends and with the GAA looking to try and give a minimum 13 days’ gap to hurling and possibly football counties before they commence their provincial/cup campaigns we will see Championship in late June or early July.

Should hurling counties opt for May 8/9 start and the three-week run-in (which is expected), it could allow the GAA to run a similar schedule to last year’s winter championship when the Clare-Limerick and Dublin-Laois quarter-finals took place just as the football league was concluding.

Therefore, a headstart of a week for the hurling championship would allow the GAA to play both major competitionss roughly over the same timeframe as 2020 — backdoor for Liam MacCarthy Cup, and then knockout for Sam Maguire Cup.

Played over 49 or 50 days as was the case last year, the chances of August All-Ireland finals would appear to be strong meaning the completely exclusive period for clubs would start in September, those outstanding 2020 club games possibly being played in August if their counties are out of the Championship.

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