Mark Schutte making his mark for Dublin

Dónal Óg Cusack cut an exasperated figure when writing in these pages last June about the dearth of attacking talent in Dublin.

It was a theme of Cusack’s TV punditry throughout the summer too, where Dublin were concerned though it clearly didn’t find favour with all of their players.

“I did really enjoy Dónal Óg banging on there during the year about how we needed new forwards, a clean sweep to find new players,” said Liam Rushe in October. “I was kind of thinking, ‘what new players could he possibly be talking about?!’ ”