Shots fired at Dessie Farrell were 'disgraceful', insists James McCarthy

Most reasonable minds would have conceded that Dessie Farrell had assumed a thankless task in taking over from Jim Gavin, and that there always going to be tough choices and staging posts ahead but, hey, every crusade needs a religion.

Mon, 31 Jul, 2023 - 11:43

Brendan O'Brien

It can’t be easy to cultivate a chip on the shoulder with a pocketful full of silver. Dublin used 20 players in yesterday’s All-Ireland final and only two of them didn’t have an All-Ireland medal to their name. The other 18 boasted a collection of 104 Celtic Crosses.

This wasn’t a bunch with anything to prove. Shouldn’t have been anyway. The only team in the game’s history to claim a six-in-a-row, they fed off two years of disappointment and doubts that had filtered into camp from outside the camp.

And not just that. As Tyrone and Kerry celebrated their successes in this new, ‘open’ era, there was a part of James McCarthy who, as he travelled deeper into his thirties, felt put out by the way their own successes had been framed.

“There was a lot of negative talk after doing the five or the six-in-a-row about the finances and the money and all this type of stuff,” he said. “I just think that’s bullshit but everyone had their say on that.”

This simmering vat of resentment bubbled over after their two-point win, a handful of them letting their guards down when asked to sum up this latest achievements with pot shots, both guarded and pointed, at narratives others had written for them.

Not least when it came to their manager.

“I just thought some of the shots at him the last two years were disgraceful, to be honest,” said McCarthy whose post-match deliberations were interrupted by the delivery of a fresh Guinness to the media room.

Farrell himself has never fanned these flames. Quiet-spoken and deliberate, he dismissed this stuff as “bullshit and nonsense” and a “race to the bottom” and explained how it was part of the job to ignore it and keep faith with their abilities and the journey.

That belief was allied to pragmatism.

A whole platoon of Dublin players and backroom staff were in Luttrellstown Castle last December when McCarthy got married to Clodagh O’Mahony so talk inevitably turned to those faces marked absent from the dressing-room.

Stephen Cluxton, Jack McCaffrey and Paul Mannion all eventually returned to the fold and all three made major contributions yesterday: not least with the seven points claimed by Cluxton and Mannion in such a tight encounter.

“While the young fellas were great, they were still maybe a year or two potentially off the level of the development that you need in the clutch moments on the biggest days of the year” said Farrell.

“So I have no doubt that there’s that level of selflessness in them all and the care and nurture of the group flipped the balance in our favour and meant they were much more amenable to coming back.”

For McCarthy, the journey this last three years has fed into a record ninth All-Ireland title and one that he already regards as “the most special”. Signs are that there will be no tenth to challenge that status.

The sense all year has been one of the band being brought back for one last, triumphal gig and there were clear intimations shortly after the final whistle here that the likes of McCarthy and Dean Rock, both of them 33, are eyeing the exit.

“Who knows,” said the former. “Maybe. Look, this isn’t a bad way probably to wrap it up but there’s a lot of guys have to make decisions in the next couple of months but we’ll enjoy this now and see what happens.”

All told, 12 of the players who featured against Kerry will be in their thirties by next year’s final and, whatever the personnel coming back in 2024, Dublin will lack the emotional fuel and anger that fired them this time around.

They have answered their critics for now, whether real or imagined, and the landscape they occupy come the New Year won’t be all that different in that a handful of the same teams will feel that there is a title there for their taking.

Retirements are inevitable.

“It could be an inevitability for some but it’s important that the lads get to enjoy it, that there’s no pressure on making some of those decisions,” said Farrell. “And it’s not just some of the senior guys.

“You could move down the pecking order or the age profile a little bit and there’s a lot of lads have committed so much over the years and there will be big decisions to be made for everybody.

“But I have no doubt that when it comes to the time again that Dublin football will have regrouped and be the better for what they have come through this season and the last two seasons as well.”