Game was there for the taking, says Horan

James Horan is often a hard man to read. The trademark peaked hat and avoidance of direct eye contact make sure he keeps his distance.

Yesterday he walked into the Croke Park media room, without the hat, a broken man. Whereas last year he talked about rebuilding and working on their deficiencies over the winter, this time his emotions broke through the mask of impenetrability. Will he return next year for another crack?

“Ah, I haven’t a clue. I haven’t a clue at this moment in time. We’ll go away and think about it,” he said.

“It’s tough, two All-Ireland finals in-a-row is tough. Some of the mistakes we made today were disappointing. That game was there for the taking for us, but we just didn’t take the chances.

“We just have to look at it again. Like we’ve always told them, we’ll look at it like we do after every game. We are making improvements. There’s no doubt about that. But we just didn’t get over the line today.”

The words lacked the assuredness from 12 months ago, the eyes bore testament to his utter disappointment.

They had hoped to hurt Dublin’s kick-outs. Pressurising Cluxton to give them a lift both psychologically and on the scoreboard.

It didn’t work though. The exertions required to keep up that effort started to tell as early as the 20th minute. By giving away that chance to steal possession from Dublin they also gave away the platform to keep their opponents running game out of the contest.

“Ah, it’s hard to keep going, we were attacking so much and we weren’t getting the scores,” Horan continued.

“When you have a shot, and they’re getting the ball out very quick, sometimes it’s hard to reset. Some of their players wait out and sort of cheat a little to be an option for the kick-out so it can be difficult when you’re taking shots. We try to do as best we can.”

Regret filled the air. Final number seven equated with loss number seven. They had their chances and blew it. Last year against Donegal it was not retaining the ball, this time that affliction returned and will haunt them over the coming months.

“We had enough ball to win the game. We just made too many mistakes and had too many turnovers.

“I think it’s that straightforward. We dominated the first 15 minutes but we didn’t get the score return we possibly should have. We had too many wides.

“It was closer at half-time than it should have been. In the second-half, when we were attacking, we just made some poor decisions at times and it eventually cost us.

“We had some poor wides in the first-half yeah, absolutely, when we had a lot of possession. That’s disappointing.”

They tried different things. When Tom Cunniffe went off injured they brought on Cathal Carolan to match the pace of the Dublin’s half-back line with some of their own. It didn’t work.

Then they looked to midfield. Although Seamus O’Shea appeared to be going well the management wanted a fresh approach.

“He was tired yeah, he was playing in spurts. We just needed fresh legs [Barry Moran] out around the middle. Dublin were getting a bit of a run around the middle. So we just put in some fresh legs there.”

It didn’t work. A 62-year wait becomes 63 and the players must pick themselves up again. Can they?

“Ah, they’re disappointed. But there’s serious calibre in those guys. They’re made of the right stuff so they’ll dust themselves down and go again, there’s no doubt about it.”