Barney says Dean not just a free-taker, but a playmaker
In an alternate world, Lee Keegan’s GPS unit hit the ball moments before Dean Rock’s free-kick attempt deep into injury-time in last year’s All-Ireland final, resulting in a wide.
Mayo’s Sam Maguire dream remained alive - perhaps they even snatched a winner - and Rock’s confidence as a kicker was shattered.
“It’d have been interesting to see what would have happened if he (Keegan) had hit the ball alright,” said Dean’s father, Dublin legend Barney, almost a year on.
People would ask what would have happened. And Lee Keegan would have got suspended for it.
It didn’t pan out that way, of course, and Rock, like Stephen Cluxton before him, went down in history as the man who kicked Dublin to All-Ireland success.
“We didn’t see it, Dean didn’t see it either and it was one of those things,” said Barney, an All-Ireland winner and free-taker for Dublin himself. “I would never have thought of doing something like that and I think, since then, the referees have been watching, even on the encroachment, there’s an awful lot of encroachment at the minute and you’d have thought maybe after the GPS situation that people wouldn’t be encroaching as much.
I saw (David) Coldrick penalise one of the free-kicks and bring it in further during the Dublin-Tyrone game in Omagh and people were asking what was he doing, but players were running in front of the kicker. It’ll be interesting to see which way the referee approaches it this weekend.
Dean has long since outstripped his famous father in All-Ireland terms, collecting four to Barney’s solitary success in 1983, though Barney has three All-Stars to Dean’s two.
A famous photo, which has pride of place in the Rock family house, has father and son spliced together in one action shot, their respective free-taking styles perfectly mirroring each other.
It was a great picture, I just didn’t like to see that the other half of the picture was somebody with a lot of hair,” smiled Barney.
Former Dublin footballer Mick Galvin stated in 2015 that Barney was the better of the two though the man himself rejected that.
“Dean’s record would be better than mine,” Barney acknowledged. “It was different in our day because everything was off the ground too. Now you have to make the decision if it’s off the ground or out of your hands and you have to be comfortable with both.”
Rock the elder was noticeably reticent about discussing his son in public early in his Dublin career, perhaps keen not to burden a player whose county career hung in the balance after hamstring issues.
Now Dean, 28, is chasing history as part of a side on the brink of the four-in-a-row and has long since proven himself an outstanding performer.
In fact, before he was rested for the dead rubber Super 8 game against Roscommon, he’d featured in over 60 league and championship games in a row for Dublin.
“He pulled a hamstring off the bone,” said Barney of Dean’s worst injury in 2010 whilst he also underwent knee surgery in 2014. “So there was a lot of work to do to get himself back. He put his mind to really working hard with Ballymun Kickhams and they were beaten in the All-Ireland club final in 2013. I think 2012 with Ballymun was a really big year for him, it was the first Dublin championship they’d won since 1985.
“He’s developed his game a lot more since. He’s not just a free-taker, he’s a playmaker. He sets up things and if he’s given the opportunities he can take them. Last year, he scored four points from play in an All-Ireland final. If anyone scores four points from play in an All-Ireland final, there’d be a lot of people saying how great that was.
Dean did it and I suppose it’s a testament to him that the last kick of the game was the first (kickable) free Dublin got in the second half and he had the power to stand up and kick it.
Rock is optimistic about his son’s chances again on Sunday though reckons victory isn’t a foregone conclusion.
“If you look at the game in Omagh, we looked well in control and then they ended up being a kick of a ball away from bringing it back to within a point and, from that, Dublin got the kickout and ended up winning by three points. It just depends on the way the game is going with five minutes to go.”
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