Straight-talking Dubs relish clash with Cats

THE GAA journalist’s dream of a team that is open and frank with the media winning an All-Ireland, would finally put to bed the myth (confined to the GAA) that honestly proclaiming your feelings and ambitions would certainly lead to your demise.

Dublin hurlers, perhaps?

Their manager, Anthony Daly, is noted for his upfront attitude, but it’s a mindset that also extends to the players.

Take Liam Rushe, for example, still only 19 and man-of-the-match on Sunday in Dublin’s nine-point defeat of Laois in the Leinster quarter-final.

Another player in another team would be speaking of Dublin’s upcoming semi-final meeting with Kilkenny in typical GAA-speak – banal, conservative, talking up the Cats in every manner possible while talking down their own chances. Rushe though is different.

He explained: “People were saying to us – ‘Hard luck, ye got the tough side of the draw,’ but we relish this chance. You know the old adage, ‘It’s very hard to beat Kilkenny in a final’, so where better to meet them than in a semi-final, when they haven’t yet played a championship match?

“We look forward to playing at Croke Park. It will be before an empty Hill 16 but Hill 16 nevertheless. Kilkenny are the challenge with a team absolutely packed with All-Ireland medallists and All Stars.

“We’ll be major underdogs and rightly so, but we’re looking forward to it anyway.”

It’s not arrogance, it’s honesty, and it’s exactly the attitude any manager – but Anthony Daly especially – would want in his team in this kind of situation.

In an interview last week Clare’s Tony Griffin – retired, sadly, in his prime – spoke of how Daly managed to imbue that kind of belief in Clare during his three years in charge of his native county, how Clare believed even against Kilkenny when the hurling evidence strongly suggested otherwise.

And that Clare team was competitive. Dublin will be likewise in a couple of weeks’ time, in the first of the Leinster championship semi-final double-header in Croker, and will be all the better for their win over Laois.

Even there, Liam is frank. All week Anthony Daly would have been trying to impress on his players that Laois represented a real challenge, a potential banana-skin – it got through, but not to the extent required.

“We knew what to expect, we knew they had good hurlers, we knew they were going to play short balls, trying to copy Cork in a way. But it was first round, you had to shake all the cobwebs off.

“On the day we fell a bit flat, couldn’t get the ball in, weren’t up for it I suppose as much as we should have been. It’s hard to come into a game like that flying, you’re building for the next game.

“They had had a game already, against Carlow, probably took a bit of criticism for their display in that one, so they came out against us and were really up for it, whereas we came out just to get a job done, get a win under our belt and move on. They won all the rucks, all the breaking ball, all the puckouts, in the first half. We weren’t really tuned in properly, but thankfully we were the more efficient scorers and got away with it.

“We were very economical, had only one wide in the first half, ten points; we upped it in the second half, got our own share of ball and pulled away eventually.”