Rebel plight has Daly in dark

THE little preview box above this piece tells its own story. Anthony Daly’s Dublin are 1/3 to defeat title hurling aristocrats Cork in tomorrow’s NHL opener.

And the men from the capital don’t even have home advantage.

Given the backdrop of everything that has happened on Leeside over the past four months, this game is attracting unprecedented attention for a league clash. The experts deem it a slaughter of the innocents by the topflight’s underdogs. Daly though is too experienced to get sucked in by this.

“All we can do is try and focus on our own thing, and try and avoid the Cork thing,” he said. “We literally don’t know too much about them, other than that some of them played minor (for the county) and some play with Sarsfields. We have to try and get our own heads right. That’s key!.”

It hasn’t all been smooth running for Daly. Appointed in November, he had to quickly construct a management team who knew the lay of the land. Then he began his trawl for players in the midst of the collective training ban.

“It took a bit of time to put the backroom team together,” he agreed. “I wanted to get that right, then we were looking at a panel. We had a couple of trials before Christmas and we got them on a weights programme.That’s really all we did and we came back with the Blue Stars match (against a club selection) and after that went into training. And then we got the hiding off Kilkenny (6-12 to 0-12 in the Walsh Cup).”

He has had to cope with injuries, the fact that six of the squad were involved with DIT and UCD and the unavailability of first-choice goalkeeper Gary Maguire and the team’s established (and highly rated) centre-back Ronan Fallon who are both in Australia. Additionally, three players who lined out against Cork last year have gone off the panel, while county footballer Ross O’Carroll is tied up with Kilmacud Crokes in the club championship.

Daly believes matters have improved significantly in Dublin in recent years. Pointing out that they won two Leinster U21 and minor titles since 2005, along with the All-Ireland colleges championship, he says there has been ‘a fierce amount of progress’ made. “They have a better under-age pedigree than Dublin footballers in Leinster over the last six of seven years and we’d be hoping to build on that,” he added.

“That’s the basis of the squad at the moment, with a few older heads thrown in. A few of the lads who we brought back weren’t involved last year and they have given great commitment. They showed great battling qualities to win on Sunday (Walsh Cup Shield final) — seven or eight you might think would be on your championship team if you were to pick it at the minute. And who knows, if the fellows who got their chance last Sunday show the same type of form they’d be hard to be shifted.

“That’s the sort of competition we want in the panel. All you can really hope for at this time of the year is that everyone is giving everything in the drills and the running with Jim Kielty and they are doing that.”

Kielty is the respected athletics coach who has worked with a number of teams including Wexford, Tipperary hurlers and Mayo. Daly himself is boosted by the knowledge that he has some ‘top-class’ players to work with, the likes of defender Tomás Brady, last season’s captain Stephen Hiney, John McCaffrey (not expected to start, because of injury) and David O’Callaghan, who received a nomination in the full-forward line for the All Stars last year.

“There is a lot of potential there, but we must keep working hard with them, keep the commitment level and try and maybe put extra steel into them going forward. It’s building up, but it’s going to take a bit of time.”

After three years with Clare and then getting back into management at club level in Kerry, Daly says that he is happy to be back, believing that he is more sure of himself this time and better qualified to take on challenges.

For him it’s an addiction, akin to his passion for greyhounds, which brought him to the coursing festival in Clonmel earlier in the week.

“There’s no doubt there is a huge buzz being involved at this level, pitting yourself against the very best. And being in Division One is great for the team.

“We’d all love to have the Kilkenny squad available to us, but unfortunately that’s Brian Cody’s privilege and he is making a fantastic job of it. The rest of us must work with what we have. You have fierce lows if things don’t go right and you have the media interest, but being involved with Clare for three years is standing to me. I am more experienced, more rubber-necked... or is it thick-skinned,” he laughs.