Kieran Shannon: Fear of the Blue monster is no more as Dublin's air of invincibility evaporates
John Small and his Dublin team-mates leave the pitch after defeat in the Allianz Football League Division 1 match to Armagh last weekend. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
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?
