Macauley: We’re ready to go again

MICHAEL Darragh Macauley claims Dublin’s keen edge hasn’t been blunted by celebrating their breakthrough All-Ireland football title success.

The Sam Maguire winners will return to competitive action this weekend when they travel to Dr Cullen Park to face Carlow in the opening round of the O’Byrne Cup.

It’ll be their first official game since beating Kerry in September’s All-Ireland final to end a 16-year losing streak at the top level.

Several of the players have admitted since the level of excitement generated by the win around the capital was shocking. But fears that any of the players may have over indulged in the party period have been put to bed by Macauley who says their current fitness is more or less what they expected.

Crucially, he says they’ve drawn a line under the celebrations and are happy to return to the coalface of another gruelling pre-season schedule of training. “I think we’re in a similar position to where we were last year with our fitness,” said Macauley.

“In fairness to lads, they kept tipping away at it over the winter. The most important thing in the off season, I think, is that lads build on their strength and conditioning and lads did that to a huge extent. A lad who needed to bulk up, bulked up, and lads that needed to lose a bit of weight lost weight. Now it’s January and it’s back into the fitness work and it’s all systems go. It’s going in the right direction.”

As for the notion that success may have knocked the ravenous hunger for silverware off the players, Macauley doesn’t buy into that either. He says they’re committed to working even harder than they did last year which means more punishing pre-dawn training sessions in the coming weeks.

“If we play the exact same as we did last year we’re not going to win the All-Ireland again,” claimed Macauley.

“We’re going to have to step it up a gear because all of the teams we are playing against will be trying to up it a gear to catch us.”

In all, 13 of last year’s panel will be available for the Carlow game with All-Ireland winning captain Bryan Cullen expected to lead the team out again.

Those who’ll be looking to take advantage of the experimentation and nail down an Allianz League panel place include John Small, Darragh Nelson, Nicky Devereaux, Michael McCarthy, Blaine Kelly and Paddy Andrews.

“What’s what it’s all about, freshening up the squad, everyone pushing hard for positions,” said Macauley.