Dublin need everything to go right
Established starters Stephen Hiney, Tomás Brady and Óisín Gough are missing from defence while their biggest attacking gun, Conal Keaney, is also out as is David Treacy.
Even had they been at full strength, Dublin would have been underdogs going into this game, up against the destroyers of Waterford in the Munster final, but what chance now? If ever a team was set up to overcome those odds, however, it’s Dublin, and for the reasoning here one must look to the sideline. In 1987 Tipperary hadn’t won a Munster title for 16 years, but on an unforgettable day in Killarney, they were led from the wilderness by Richard Stakelum, who famously declared in his victory speech: ‘The famine is over!’.
Eight years later, in 1995, another winning captain was declaring an end to an even longer Munster championship famine and later that year Anthony Daly delivered one of the great All-Ireland final orations.
Two men who are now guiding the fortunes of Dublin, two men who know what it is to spit in the face of adversity – that must surely give Dublin a chance.
That’s all it is, however, a chance and a slim one at that. It was only last year that many of us were acknowledging that Kilkenny, chasing its fifth All-Ireland in-a-row, is probably the greatest hurling team of all time, yet in that final they were beaten by a Tipperary team which itself could well have been going for two in-a-row had things gone right for them in the final of 2009. So what does that make Tipp? Front to back, from Brendan Cummins in goal to Lar Corbett at top of the left, this is a team that oozes talent. They play with a ferocious pace, they are relentless in attack, vigilant in defence, alert equally to impending danger or to possible openings from first whistle to last.
And they work like a pack of cur dogs with or without the ball. Against all that, without those five big players and even with Daly and Stakelum guiding them, urging them on, what chance have Dublin?
We all know favourites can fall. For that to happen, however, it will take an effort of monumental proportions from Dublin, an untimely and unlikely collapse from Tipperary, an alignment of all the stars and planets. Unlikely.
* Verdict: Tipperary
