Cullen’s final focus
It’s an oration the former Dublin captain has never been allowed forget.
“It was just kind of spur of the moment,” he said of the ‘Coppers’ reference As I’ve said before, since I’ve been involved with Dublin, we go back there and we’re either celebrating or drowning our sorrows.
“I suppose it’s the first thing that came into my head after winning the All-Ireland, that we were going to be partying for a while. That’s where it spawned from. No more interesting than that, I’m afraid.”
After years featuring on teams that flattered to deceive, Cullen could be forgiven for the speech sign-off. It was a moment of unbridled elation whereas his address on accepting the Delaney Cup two months earlier was full of promise: “The season starts here.”
Too long had Dublin either read too much into their facile annexing of provincial crowns and come up dreadfully short mostly in All-Ireland quarter-finals. They’d been branded as chokers during Paul Caffrey’s time. Cullen reckons it wasn’t a mental hang-up as much as Dublin simply were beaten by superior teams. “Looking back, we lost games before and we were criticised for not being mentally strong enough. To be honest, I always thought it boiled down to the fact we probably weren’t good enough.
“The likes of Kerry and Tyrone, they had better players than we had. They had the added value of winning All-Irelands and the confidence of bringing that from season to season. We didn’t have that. It’s only taken the win we’ve had a couple of years ago to really develop that.”
On the bench for all but one of Dublin’s five Championship games, when before he was a regular under Pat Gilroy and Caffrey, he’s learned how to view the game differently.
“I try to analyse the game and talking to the guys around me about how the game is unfolding and even what messages can we give the guys at half-time, to help us progress. I prefer to keep an eye on where I might be coming in, potential opponents and how we can do better in that area.”
His concerns about the team weren’t realised as Dublin absorbed what Kerry threw at them, just at they did to a lesser extent against Kildare and Meath. It’s becoming a trademark of Dublin under Gavin. “I suppose you just have to remain confident that if things don’t go for you early on there’s a huge amount of time left if you just keep plugging away, keep trying to implement what you’ve been working on and it will come good for you.”
