Daly: This effort will stand to the lads
No matter how bad the situation, he can always find some reason to smile.
Assessing yesterday’s defeat just minutes after the final whistle, he was able to take some light relief in his track record in the last four games.
“Near misses are hard enough to take, to be honest. All-Ireland semi-finals and me don’t seem to get on at the moment anyway!”
He was, of course, referring to his past as Clare manager when he lost back-to-back All-Ireland semi-finals.
This was different, though. Without five first team players, Dublin put in a performance beyond any moral victory.
It’ll still hurt this morning but a platform has been established and all indications are that Daly will be around again to lead the charge next year. But yesterday it wasn’t for a lack of effort that Dublin lost. On the match-ups, they were the better side although they lacked that bit of cuteness All-Ireland champions Tipperary had in spades.
“We did win so many personal battles, and fellas had great games, but they were clinical at times that we weren’t.
“It’s the first time in a semi-final in a long, long time and I think it will stand to lads being in them.”
Deploying Johnny McCaffrey as sweeper but also helped by tremendous displays from Peter Kelly and Joey Boland down the centre, Dublin were able to make more than a game of it.
But Daly also felt the early goal might have worked against Tipperary and possibly added to an air of complacency.
“We knew it wasn’t going to be anything like the last day either. What happened in Cork was a freak show (when Tipperary put seven goals past Waterford) and it was weird to be watching.
“It’s a rare thing for teams to hit two of those days on the bounce and it must have been hard for the Tipp management to get their heads 100% tuned into it with everyone talking about the final.
While Dublin were extremely effective in neutralising Tipperary’s appetite for goals, their own lack of any real goal-scoring threat — Brendan Cummins was hardly called on to pull off some magic — hurt them.
Paul Ryan had one audacious shot in the first-half while Maurice O’Brien struck too high in the second.
“We went for broke with 17 or 18 minutes to go, bringing on Daire (Plunkett), threw caution to the wind at that stage,” said Daly. “We might have been as well off leaving Johnny (McCaffrey) sitting around the midfield.
“Ah no, we still created enough, there was still a few half chances of goals. Maurice O’Brien’s one flew over, if it had flown under the bar....”
Gary Maguire was called on a couple of times to deny Seamus Callanan and Lar Corbett and was up to the task.
“He’s been brilliant all year, Gary,” enthused Daly. “He’s worked so hard on his game. From the fella I met two years ago, he’s a fair man to train now. He’s stepped up to the plate and in fairness he’s getting his fair amount of rewards but to play in an All-Ireland final would be a fair bigger reward than any other award he could get later in the year.”
As for the future, Daly was keeping quiet and will take some time out before making a decision on whether to stay with the county for a fourth season.
“All eggs were in the basket for today, I didn’t think about that,” he said of next year with Dublin. “I’ll think about that for the next few weeks. We tried to focus away from the minors today but maybe we watched too much of the minors in the Leinster final. But when we went out and I saw it was six-something to one-something, I thought ‘Jesus, that is some performance’.
“They’ve the potential to go on and win the final.”
