Daly’s Dubs ‘mad for road’, but Allen rues profligacy

Exuberant is a fair reflection of how Dublin manager Anthony Daly was feeling after their one-point win over Limerick on Saturday evening.

“We’re looking forward to a League semi-final against Tipperary and we’re mad for road. It’s great and you want to be keeping that positivity going.”

He had every reason to feel good. The win doesn’t just see Dublin qualify for that league semi-final, it ensures they will be back up with the big boys in Division 1A next year. “You’re depriving good lads of big days,” Daly says of time spent in Division 1B. “Last Sunday (against Carlow) we played in front of 500 or 600 and all the attention was on three massive Division 1A games, which is what lads want.”

They earned their promotion too, overcoming a poor but efficient first half — seven scores from seven shots on goal, no wides against eight for Limerick, trailed by just a point at the break, 1-7 to 1-6.

“It was a struggle. We didn’t deserve to be within a point at half-time, Limerick probably deserved to be ahead by more. We had a good chat with ourselves at half-time. Johnny McCaffrey, after being told he was being taken off, stood up and said a few words to the boys even though he must have been the most disappointed man in the dressing-room. Fair play to them, they came out fighting but how you decide a game like that, I don’t know — you need a bit of luck.”

You also need to make the right calls on the line and in the selection of Liam Rushe to start at centre-back, Daly and his co-selectors were proved right as the big St Patrick’s man went on to be man-of-the-match, shading a great battle with Seamus Hickey.

“We don’t get it wrong all the time!”, laughed the Dublin boss. “If Liam had a bad night then people would be saying ‘why wasn’t Keaney there?’ but most of the league Liam had played centre-back. Conal didn’t have a great night but, look, he’ll bounce back because there are big characters on this team.”

As for Limerick, the former Clare captain felt a certain sympathy. “They should have been up (promoted) two years ago. They were up but they revamped the situation (Limerick won promotion in 2011 but the GAA changed the league structure, left them in a lower division). Look, realistically there should be at least eight teams in Division One. That Limerick team is a fine team and Tipp will know about it when they’re finished with them in the championship, I tell you.”

Where Daly was exuberant, his Limerick counterpart John Allen was just down. “I’m very disappointed. It was nip-and-tuck, I thought it would be a draw, that there would be extra-time. We created enough chances in the first half but too many wides, too much rash shooting and it cost us. I can’t fault the players, they tried very hard, our backs were super in the first-half. It’s just very disappointing. Credit to Dublin, both of those teams are good enough for Division 1A. It was championship fare really, for 20 minutes of the second-half it was nip-and-tuck, up and down the field. I’m just bitterly disappointed. Certainly their ratio of scores to shots in the first-half was better than ours; they had no wides, and that was the difference. We created the chances but if you don’t take those you don’t win.”