Paul Rouse: While Dublin are still the side to beat they are no longer seen as invincible
Dublin's John Small with Ryan O’Donoghue, Conor Loftus, Kevin McLoughlin and Diarmuid O’Connor of Mayo during the 2021 All-Ireland SFC semi-final. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
The best thing about Dublin losing in 2021 is what it now means for the 2022 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship.
This is a championship that suddenly looks wide open.
For the past half-dozen years, the shadows cast by Dublin have defined every view of how a football season might play out. It was possible to make a case for Dublin losing in any given year, but it usually felt that making such a case involved straining every scenario almost to the point of incredulity.
Most of all, this was because they had a settled group of superb players who were added to year after year by premium talents. And they had a management team that was in absolute control of their realm.
At the start of every summer, you more or less knew the 20 players who would play in an All-Ireland final or semi-final for Dublin.
That is no longer the case.
There was a really interesting interview with Brian Fenton a month ago. In the course of his remarks, he said: “I was only talking to James McCarthy and he was saying that there’s no need to panic just yet. Look around our changing room at the names that are there, the experience that’s there, the professionals that are there in terms of the set up. As players, what we give to the Dublin jersey, there’ll be no time to panic. Hopefully, with an influx of younger players to add to that, it’ll only drive all of our standards.”
For Dublin, there is indeed a lot to be positive about. Any dressing-room with Fenton, McCarthy, Ciaran Kilkenny, Con O’Callaghan and other multiple All-Ireland winners can rightly be confident for 2022.
But it is a confidence that lives beside a new reality: the sense of any certainty is now gone. This is betrayed by the idea of “an influx of new players”. Who are they? Where will they play? Which of the old guard will be pushed aside? And are we to believe that this influx will be as good as, say, Flynn, Connolly, Brogan and the whole supporting cast of departed stars who turned up and performed season after season?
The evidence would suggest otherwise.
And for the old-timers, especially in the defence, will they be able to defy time? The story of ageing bodies is usually that of injury or fatigue preventing the type of training that will allow for intensity of performance when it really matters. There are very occasional exceptions to this rule. But the toll of mileage reveals itself slowly — and then confirms itself all of a sudden.
The reality is that Dublin looked laboured in last year’s championship. They stuttered through Leinster for the first time in years and they did not look particularly fit. It would be interesting to know if all the Dublin footballers who played against Mayo in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final had prepared with the same application as previous years. Or were they just not able?
Either way, the gap in conditioning with other teams that was manifest over the six-in-a-row run was not apparent in 2021.
That, in itself, changes the dynamic of the championship.
If there are question marks about Dublin, there are still more about Kerry. Over the past three years, Kerry have looked like potential All-Ireland champions, without ever convincing.
And in the end, in each of the last three years, they have proved not to be hard-nosed enough when it really mattered. This is not just a matter of Kerry’s defenders, it is also about how willing and able Kerry’s forwards are to be ruthless with and without the ball.
That question will continue to be asked until Kerry win an All-Ireland. Who are the players that are going to bring that extra hard edge to Kerry in the summer of 2022?
The one think that Tyrone demonstrated is the ability to be hard-nosed. They did whatever it took to win — on and off the field. And the feeling is that the team is going to get better. Getting through Ulster will be the first challenge, but the ambition to be the first team from Tyrone to retain the Sam Maguire is a potent, energising drive.
Behind those three teams, the most likely contenders are Mayo and Donegal. Mayo cannot be dismissed because of their ability to turn up properly prepared in any given year. They reached an All-Ireland final without Cillian O’Connor and might very well have won it if he had played. They have reached the last two finals and it is unwise to dismiss them as having missed the boat last year. That has been said again and again, and still they come back.
The great enigma is Donegal. On the Football Podcast, Oisin McConville regularly references the sheer number of outstanding footballers in Donegal.
Can they generate the momentum required to take them through Ulster and into Croke Park, a field where they should flourish? Or are they the game’s great underachievers?
The thing is: there are actually a lot of good teams now playing Gaelic football. Armagh are a good team. Derry are a good team. So are Monaghan. And Galway show glimpses that they are also to be reckoned with.
And there are other counties where there is obvious potential and the failure to compete more consistently when the air gets thinner is a mystery. For example, how is it that Kildare and Cork are not consistent challengers for honours? Both counties have loads of footballers and operate where there is enough wealth in the local economy to provide the resources to support their teams. And both serially fall short of even modest expectations, all the while hinting at the potential to be much better.
So what way will it all play out in the new condensed season?
On Wednesday, December 8 — inter-county football teams were allowed back into the field for training sessions. You would want to be spectacularly naïve to imagine that there hadn’t been de facto training underway in counties all across Ireland, albeit nicely disguised.
And that makes sense. Pre-season competitions — the O’Byrne, McGrath and McKenna Cups, along with the FBD Connacht League — begin in less than a fortnight on January 5. The National Football League begins on January 29. Teams in the league will play seven matches in nine weeks.
There is little more than two weeks then between the league and the provincial championships which begin on Easter weekend, 16-17 April — and the All-Ireland Football final is fixed for Sunday, 24 July.
Once the games start and the wheel begins to turn, there will be no respite. The team that runs into problems will not have much time and space to regroup.
Maybe Dublin will regroup. Maybe as Fenton said, they will be rejuvenated: “There’s no more, ‘Well, Dublin will be beaten sometime.’ There’s no narrative out there anymore about who is going to bring down Dublin. We’re human, and we’re ready to go again, and we can’t wait for it.” Maybe.
But the question marks that hang over every team now also hang over Dublin in a way that is truly intriguing. The shadows cast by the six-in-a-row team now fall also on themselves.
