Colin Sheridan: Dublin's muscle memory of serial winners has given way to creeping amnesia
Tempers flare between both teams during Kerry's National League win over Dublin. Picture: INPHO/Evan Treacy
It’s impossible to start anywhere else but Tralee, on a night that you wouldn’t leave an ill-tempered mongrel out in, Dublin gave further oxygen to the growing sense that their decade of dominance may indeed be over.
Of all the fixtures to follow their dismantling at the hands of a primed Armagh, Kerry away on a Saturday night was as welcome as a colonoscopy for a team whose reputation for beating opponents before a ball was kicked had become their calling card. Never with Kerry or Mayo, admittedly.
Sure, Dublin lost the odd game in spring and for the last few years winning the league seemed a point of indifference, but if the last fortnight has confirmed anything, it is only that the air of invincibility has evaporated. Their performance last Saturday night in Tralee was personified by an abject lack of creativity, albeit in brutal conditions. While the depth of personnel may not be there for Dessie Farrell as it was for his predecessor, any team that boasts Brian Fenton, Ciaran Kilkenny, Niall Scully and Dean Rock should have the wherewithal to figure things out as they go.
Not so. The muscle memory of serial winners has given way to creeping amnesia. They have become the classic case of a team who need to lead in order for their lateral, methodical suffocation of any opposition, usually quarterbacked by the metronomic Kilkenny, to be effective. Chasing teams — good teams — is becoming increasingly revealing. It became apparent rather quickly in Austin Stack Park that Dublin would not be catching the Kingdom.
Some curious officiating from Conor Lane and his team only served to further amplify how little regard the other actors on the stage suddenly have for the aging matinee idol. Some perspective — should Dublin lose every game in division one, they would still most likely win a Leinster championship and sail unperturbed into sudden death football.
That gives Farrell and his brainstrust a helluva lot of time to apply a tourniquet and stop the bleed. He has no time for rebuilding. A rediscovery of self esteem, triggered by being so quickly dismissed by their critics, would definitely help. So too, would a discernible game plan.
I always fancied Kieran McGeeney to be a fan of Aristotle, and his seminal work on morals The Nicomachean Ethics in particular. One swallow does not a summer make, the grand old thinker told us, and it undoubtedly formed the backbone of McGeeney’s message to his charges following their demolition of Dublin in Croke Park in round one. Backing up that performance with a comprehensive victory over rivals and defending All-Ireland champions Tyrone only serves to illustrate the progress Armagh are making, how primed they are to consolidate their status in the top tier, and how flexible they appear to be in adapting their approach to suit the opposition they meet. The individual quality at McGeeney’s disposal is clear to see, what is less certain is their ability to maintain the pace at which they’ve left the blocks. They wouldn’t be the first team to emerge from a lower division to come out firing like a runaway gun — think Kevin McStay’s Roscommon and Paraic Joyce’s Galway — only to find the harder ground and more street smart opponents too hot to handle at the business end of things. Now is not the time for such pragmatism, however. A bird in the hand is worth two in the league, as they say.
Familiarity breeds contempt, and just as Dublin footballers taking water inspires glee in all those outside the capital, Limerick hurlers suffering a setback of any description at least gives everyone not loyal to the Treaty some cause for optimism. In the case of Limerick, the result in Wexford will likely matter far more to those in the Model county than to John Kiely’s men.
Not a man to suffer fools, this uncharacteristic loss will make next Saturday night’s clash with Henry Shefflin’s Galway a must watch. What, if anything, would back-to-back losses mean to a team for whom refined excellence has become routine? The bear is poked. The flip side of this result was a dream start to intercounty management for Wexford’s Darragh Egan.
Filling the boat-size shoes of Davy Fitz was never going to be easy. Beating arguably the best team of the last decade in your first game is a hell of a way to start. Egan made headlines by adding two outsiders — boxing’s BIlly Walsh and Leinster’s Gordon D’arcy — to his backroom team. Too much can be read into individual results, but more performances like this and the impact of fresh voices will be hard to ignore.
As the rain fell in Dangan last Tuesday night, so, it seemed, did the curtain on Mayo corner forward Tommy Conroy’s season. A serious injury sustained playing for NUIG against Letterkenny in the Sigerson Cup highlighted the pressures young student footballers find themselves in. Conroy quickly became the totem of the wider issue of player welfare — but in Mayo, where he has over the past two seasons established himself as one of the pillars of the teams attack alongside Ryan O’Donoghue, his injury had a much more immediate significance.
Mayo, already without the generational Cillian O’Connor, are suddenly faced with the prospect of being without a player whose emergence has softened the perennial angst of finding an inside forward who could, on his day, make light of the perennial accusation Mayo do not breed inside forwards. In the face of such a depressing prospect, you might expect Mayo to head north to Clones and struggle to beat a Monaghan team looking for a first win of their own. In typical Mayo fashion, win they did.
A source of comfort for Mayo fans and inspiration for Conroy should be the fact that the star of the win was Jason Doherty, two games into a comeback that followed a near three-year layoff through injury. The enigma grows, however. Wins away in Clones against the odds are par for the course for a team that revels in adversity. Hopefully James Horan is learning something. For the rest of us, the mystery deepens.
Much was justifiably made of London’s win over Carlow in the opening round of Division 4 action last weekend, and, like Armagh, they would’ve been forgiven a reversion to type had they lost to Waterord, a team that themselves held Tipp (remember them?) to a draw last weekend. Instead, Michael Maher’s men backed up the Carlow result with a one-point win in Ruislip.
The debate over competition structures and fixture congestion continues, victories such as London’s highlight the importance of participation in competitions teams have literally no chance of winning. Maher manages a squad of barely 30 players based in a city where few employers will care too much to let them off early to attend training. They are at the edge of the abyss in terms of support and visibility. They are outliers in every sense of the word, occupying the same planet, but living in a different world to David Clifford and Cathal McShane.
Most league campaigns matter little come May, this one will be worth tracking every weekend from now till summer. Next up, Andy Moran and Leitrim. What chance three from three?
His Leitrim side undoubtedly ruined a load of accumulators by beating Tipperary away in Semple Stadium. This performance comes on the heels of a narrow defeat to Cavan in round one. Carrick-on-Shannon is not Kilburn, but the similarities in challenges that face both Moran and Maher in London are striking. Small player pools, logistical obstacles at every turn, it would be easy to accept your fate and hope for the odd moral victory against a hungover goliath.
On the contrary, Moran means business. Thirteen months ago, Tipp were Munster champions. Their presence along with Cavan in Division 4 should have ensured the promotional hopes of Leitrim and London were dead on arrival. Instead, a new manager has brought new hope. They’ll fancy taking the exiles and having four points from a possible six next time out.
As managerial debuts go, there’ll be few as stress free as Henry Shefflin’s maiden over hurdles against Offaly. An accomplished performance by his Galway side will have come as little surprise to those who assumed the Ballyhale man would be demanding a level of performance in keeping with his own unrelenting standards as both player and manager. This result will be long forgotten by the time summer comes. Galway are a team in need of something big; a win over Limerick next time out? A league title? An unmerciful kick up the arse? All three, perhaps. Whatever comes, the journey has begun. For Sheflin, you’d have to guess only one destination is acceptable.
