Kieran Shannon: Fear of the Blue monster is no more as Dublin's air of invincibility evaporates

In an era of change Dublin may beat you but their aura won't

Tue, 01 Feb, 2022 - 08:45

Back when Kieran McGeeney and Armagh were just hours away from becoming back-to-back All Ireland champions, Mickey Harte, for as buoyant and daring as his young Tyrone team were, felt compelled to undergo an exercise to remove any remaining obstacles that were inconsistent with his match theme of No Ifs, No Maybes, Total Faith.

Armagh that summer had underlined just what a remarkably physically imposing team they were, but just so his own team weren’t building them up to be something more than they were, Harte calculated from a newspaper’s pen pictures that Joe Kernan’s team on average were only three-quarters-of-an-inch taller and seven ounces heavier per man than his own charges. At his last team meeting, he threw a sugar capsule at Philly Jordan: that’s the difference in weight they have on us. Can you cope with that? Is that a physical presence beyond what you are capable of dealing with and stopping you winning an All-Ireland?

The players laughed as the granule was passed on because the point registered. No, it wasn’t going to stop them. Or at least Armagh’s supposed aura wasn’t.

Armagh would still retain – and cultivate – an aura over the subsequent three seasons or so. Their jerseys were designed so that they appeared even more muscular and supremely conditioned than they even were. An Orange book found its way into the media and mainstream that created a sense of admiration as much as Dublin’s Blue Book would later invite ridicule. On their way to winning three subsequent Ulster titles in a row, they beat some teams before the game was even played, or others in the final minutes because both parties believed the narrative Armagh won those kind of games. It was only when Kieran Donaghy, who openly admitted that he had initially felt daunted going into play Francie Bellew & Co in 2006, scored that goal and brazenly asked Paul Hearty nose-to-nose “Who’s crying now, baby?” that people were no longer afraid of the big bad Orange wolf.

Only a select few other teams since then have had that indefinable quality. Donegal for a short while there had it, this tangible sense that they just would not be stopped, from the time they swept away Derry in an early Ulster championship game in 2012 and right through that summer and into the following year, until Monaghan bloodied their nose and then Mayo rode right over them, seemingly leaving only a corpse.

Kerry have intermittently had it, though not quite as often or as much as you would think a side as charismatic and irresistible as they had throughout the Tomás years would. Mayo bordered on attaining it, especially against Connacht opposition, as did the Cork team of Canty; as Neil McGee would tell Bernard Brogan and a few Dubs over a few pints over the August bank holiday weekend of 2009, encountering such a physically-powerful unit in Croke Park that weekend was like being stampeded by a herd of elephants.

You couldn’t say Tyrone have it either, and certainly not their current team. They may have had a boldness and a defiance about them that made them dangerous and eventual worthy All-Ireland champions, but even – especially – now you can’t say you can’t see them being beaten.

Dublin though have had that aura, for as long and as strongly as any team in Gaelic football has ever had it. From the moment Jim Gavin took them over in 2013 and laid down a marker in his opening league game by spanking a Cork team that had won the three previous leagues, they radiated a sense of purpose and mission. It increased throughout that spring, for the manner in which they dismissed Kerry in Killarney and then twice beat Mayo, a side that had defeated them in both league and championship the previous year.

Even when Jim McGuinness ambushed them in that famous 2014 semi-final, Dublin’s response was to win the following year’s league, beating a Mayo by 14 points in Castlebar. The league as much as the championship defined who they were, and was what separated them from Micko’s Team of All Talents (who, don’t forget, won eight All-Irelands too, but just the three leagues to Gavin’s five). Any game, any competition, was the opportunity to stake down your own spot and lay down a statement to everyone else. We are relentless. We are unsatisfied. We are a winning machine that does not stop.

That Dublin team and Dublin mindset is no more. It’s not just that they have lost a masterful manager in Gavin; they’ve simply lost too many players. Although only three of the 15 that started the 2019 All-Ireland final are unavailable to Dessie Farrell this year, almost their entire bench, or their Finishers, as Gavin liked to call them, have retired. What made Dublin so daunting, so invincible in those years was as much as who wasn’t playing for them as who was: Kevin McManamon, Paddy Andrews, Eoghan O’Gara, Michael Darragh Macauley, Cormac Costello. In 2019, Bernard Brogan couldn’t even make a championship match-day 26 until the very last game of the year.

Dean Rock’s form and career trajectory would appear to be where Brogan was around 2017, but does anyone think his championship minutes this summer will be as limited as they were for Brogan four years ago? There simply isn’t a Rock 2017, or more tellingly, a Con O’Callaghan 2017, to edge him out.

We are not writing Dublin off here. Last Saturday night was just the opening game of the league. It was played in January. In 2015 Dublin also lost their opening league game, and indeed won only one of their first four games. In 2019, the year of the five in a row, they lost their two opening league games. They have James McCarthy and Con O’Callaghan to come back, players who remind their opposition and their teammates that this is Dublin you’re playing against or for. There was a reason Dessie Farrell was chosen as Gavin’s successor; at U20 level he showed himself to be a shrewd reader of the game and manager of talent. He will adapt: his methods, his style of play, his personnel.

But still, this feels different: this setup, this league. There’s no rookie team in this year’s Division One to flagellate or intimidate a la some Roscommon or Meath teams through the years and restore that aura; if there was one, it was Armagh the other night. Dublin’s remaining six opponents are well familiar with them at this point, and know who they are and just as importantly, who they no longer are. Instead of feeling fear, those teams smell vulnerability, including Kerry who host Farrell’s team this Saturday night in Tralee. And as much as these upcoming six games will benefit and harden Dublin’s newcomers, it may equally wear down some of their vets, with so many opposing punks lining up, feeling lucky.

That could extend to the championship. Only one team can win Ulster but the great thing about this year as opposed to 2020 and 2021 is that multiple Ulster teams can reach the All-Ireland series. Would the losers of Ulster quarter-finals like Derry-Tyrone and Donegal-Armagh quake at the thought of playing Dublin in an All-Ireland quarter-final? In the Gavin years they might have – recall how fine Monaghan teams were steamrolled in 2014 and 2017 – but not now.

Dublin will still be formidable opponents. There is still an All-Ireland in them, and maybe James McCarthy and Mick Fitzsimons will eventually retire with that ninth Celtic Cross in their back pocket which will separate them from everyone else who has played the game. They can still win but they can no longer dominate.

It’s not just that an era is over: that ended sometime between Jim Gavin stepping away and Stephen Cluxton doing the same.

An aura is over.

Dublin may still beat you but their aura won’t.