McManamon ready for Rebel battle

Kevin McManamon has played down the significance of Dublin potentially ending their 25-year run without a league victory in Cork this weekend.

The reigning Division 1 champions are fancied to set the record straight and Sunday’s O’Byrne Cup man of the match is intrigued by the prospect of doing something not achieved since they won 0-10 to 0-6 in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in November 1990 though he insists it’s not a primary motivation.

“It hasn’t been mentioned but we try to win every game. Maybe something like that will fire you up a small bit but it hasn’t been said in our dressing room. I don’t think that’s the style of our management team.

“Look, we want to win every game. Some managers use those kind of things to get a bit of a gee-up, we try to be more self-motivated in terms of getting systems and tactics right. Beating Cork in Cork, it adds that bit of feistiness to it. It would be nice to break that hoodoo.”

The 28-year-old says Dublin will be attacking the competition just as they have done the past couple of years. “I don’t know what people would do other than go for it, try and win every game. It baffles me when people think teams don’t. Teams don’t throw games, they go and put out their best team on the field and hopefully we’ll have a good, strong team out next week and push on from there.”

McManamon is coming off a month where he played three of Dublin’s five O’Byrne Cup games. The concentration of action mattered little to him. It’s the lack of fixtures in the summer that exercises him.

“You’re only getting going and then you only have six in four months in the summer. It’s a bit of a pain trying to keep fresh. I don’t want to start the debate but it’s a long year and there’s not enough matches if you ask me, so I’m delighted to play games. Five games in four weeks, it’ll be a different story come the summer when it’s 10 or 12 training sessions for one game.”

The St Jude’s man showed over 90 minutes-plus in St Conleth’s Park on Sunday that he is as eager as ever. Much of his display was down to having the right attitude, he revealed.

“I only played three of the games but I’ve got a lot out of it. The O’Byrne Cup is how I broke into the Dublin team in 2010 and I would never take it for granted. I woke up this morning and said to myself, ‘How serious would you take this if it was 2010?’, and I tried to bring that into the game.

“One of the lads said anytime you put on a Dublin jersey it’s very special and you have that legacy that you’re carrying on."