Daly rues loss of dual stars and will give ’long, hard thought’ to leaving

Anthony Daly has hinted his time as Dublin hurling manager will come to an end before the summer is out.

Dublin were dumped out of the All-Ireland hurling championship yesterday, Tipperary scoring a hugely comfortable 2-23 to 0-16 win.

The defeat marked the end of Daly’s sixth campaign at the helm, the manager revealing a period of reflection will be embarked upon before any resignation letter is penned.

“I am a good while there now. We will have to give it long, hard thought,” said Daly.

“Everyone involved in the dressing room will be thinking about that. You come into a game like this and you are not thinking about your future, you are thinking about how are we going to win the game. That was our full focus. No one can make decisions like that now. There is a couple of weeks ahead where we can think about that and evaluate the situation.”

Daly oversaw a sharp rise in the county’s hurling graph since taking the reins in November of 2008. League and Leinster titles were annexed in 2011 and 2013 respectively, but the county failed to reach the All-Ireland decider, twice falling at the semi-final hurdle.

Daly believes Dublin are still capable of challenging for September honours, but hit out at the players who have dispensed with the hurley in favour of the big ball.

Ciarán Kilkenny, Cormac Costello and Eric Lowndes are three of the more impressive players to come through the county’s underage hurling factory who have opted to concentrate solely on football at senior level.

“The minors were very unlucky today. The U21s were in the Leinster final, they didn’t lose by that much and played minus the lads that went playing football. Four of the forwards went off playing football. What do you do like? Do you just give up hurling so and concentrate on football and keep winning All-Irelands. Or do you keep going? I would like to think they will keep going.”

Meanwhile, Limerick’s Shane Dowling says he is unsure if his second goal against Wexford was legal. Dowling palmed the ball beyond goalkeeper Mark Fanning on the stroke of half-time.

“That goal, I don’t know if it is legal really. I’m not sure but whatever it is I didn’t mean to palm it in to the net. I meant to catch it, it just bounced off my hand. Is it legal? Is it illegal? I don’t know. I’m sure the boys upstairs will have it well analysed.”