Alan Brogan ready for key role with Dublin

Former Footballer of the Year Alan Brogan insists he won’t be happy to sit on the bench for Dublin this summer.

The 33-year-old playmaker missed the Dubs’ successful Allianz football league campaign due to the birth of his second child in march.

Allied to his age and the quality of the players vying for starting places in the Dublin forward line, he accepts that he’s unlikely to start the Leinster championship opener on Sunday week against Longford.

But beyond that Brogan is hopeful of winning back a first-team place and signing off on what will likely be his final year with a third All-Ireland winner’s medal.

“I still think I’m good enough to play,” said the attacker, who kicked four points on his return to the Dublin side in a challenge against Galway last month. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.

“If I thought I was going to be a sub for the whole Championship, would I have come back? Probably not. I came back to get into the team. We all know how competitive a squad it is at the same time. So I’ll just have to give it the best go I can.”

Similarly, Brogan maintained that he won’t be happy with anything less than All-Ireland gold. Asked if he would have retired if Dublin had claimed back to back titles last September, he nodded.

“Possibly, yeah,” he said. “At this stage of my career, I’m coming back to try to win an All-Ireland. It doesn’t always work like that but I believe we have a strong enough team to compete.

“It didn’t work out the way we wanted last year but we saw in the past, it has proven very difficult to put All-Irelands back to back.”

The older brother of fellow Dublin forward Bernard said it will most likely be his last year in senior county action.

“Yeah, look, it probably will,” he agreed. “I haven’t really thought about that, to be honest with you. That’s probably something I’ll decide come the end of September hopefully. But as each year goes past, it does get harder and harder. It’s certainly coming close anyway for me.

“Is that an extra incentive? Of course. If you know it’s going to be your last chance, you want to give it everything you can. That certainly does play a part in the mindset and that’s probably the way I’ll treat it.

“Saying that, it’s probably the way I treated last year as well, that this could be the last shot I have so I would try to give it everything.”

Brogan was pictured in tears cradling his son immediately after last year’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Donegal. Shortly after, it was reported that he had retired and though he rejected this he waited until last month to officially return.

“Always in the back of my mind, I knew that I did want to come back but obviously when you are my age and you have a young family, there are other elements of your life that you have to take care of as well,” said Brogan.

“We had a new baby obviously in the middle of March so that was very important at this stage of my life and I was always going to be around for that.

“But once that settled down after a few weeks, I had time and could give the commitment. In the back of my mind, thinking about it over Christmas time, I did know I wanted to go back.”