We took the risk not to bring on O’Callaghan, admits Farrell

Dublin manager Dessie Farrell was not happy with his side's performance but glad to be in the hat for the quarter-final draw on Monday.

TOOK A RISK: Dublin manager Dessie Farrell admits taking a risk not bringing on captain Con O'Callaghan. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Dessie Farrell revealed Dublin took a gamble by not bringing captain Con O’Callaghan off the bench for the closing stages of their All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final win over Cork.

Farrell and his management team had debated whether to introduce the Cuala man when the fat was in the fire but ultimately chose not to risk him because of his ongoing hamstring injury.

O’Callaghan had been named to start for Dublin but was replaced by Lorcan O’Dell before throw-in and Farrell said: “We took the decision not to bring him on there.

“We sort of run the gauntlet on it a little bit for the last 10 minutes or so. Thankfully, that decision worked out, and we gave him an extra seven days to recover, and he should be good for the next day.” 

He continued: “That was the plan. It's not to say that we knew this wouldn't be a tight affair, but we were just going to hope that we had enough. There were conversations with the coaches with a couple of minutes to go. We just decided to hold on. If it was a little bit tighter, I think you would have seen him come in for sure, yeah.” 

All the same, Farrell gave credit to Cork for the challenge they presented his side. “They're a really big, strong physical team. Inside forward line, very, very dangerous. Well-conditioned, well coached so we knew what we were stepping into.

“I'm not sure everyone else may have around the country or that, but we knew how difficult this game was going to be. I'm just delighted to be out the other side of it in the hat on Monday morning.” 

Farrell wasn’t happy with his team’s display, all the same. “I think overall, the best way to describe it is us playing in fits and starts. We struggled to get the consistency across the whole performance. It's never going to be plain sailing, an opposition is always going to get a purple patch, and it's how you can contain them in that period.

“We struggled to be clinical at times, and there were opportunities maybe to put a little bit of distance between ourselves and Cork at different stages. We didn't do that, we didn't take those opportunities, so it was always going to be a dogfight to the very end.”