At half-time in their qualifier meeting with Limerick two weeks ago, Niall Corcoran took over the Dublin dressing room. The passion was steaming out his pores. With spittle splattering from his lips, the fire in Corcoran’s belly came out his throat. “This second-half,” he roared, “is do-or-die for this team.”
After a first half from hell, Dublin did. Twice, Limerick led by eight points. They could, and probably should, have been out of sight but a late scoring burst before the break gave Dublin a chance.
They grabbed it with both hands. When Dublin needed to get the first score of the second half, Paul Ryan came out and shot the first five. Dublin had wrestled back momentum and Ryan was the key to maintaining it, nailing 0-12, six from play.
Ryan had obvious motivation. After being brought on before half-time in the Leinster quarter-final replay against Galway, he was harshly hauled off again before the end.
Yet when he got his opportunity again, Ryan showed his character. So did Corcoran – his half-time contribution came from deep within his gut.
When introduced as a sub against Clare in the league, and taken off again soon afterwards, Corcoran’s days in the Dublin jersey looked numbered. He got no more game time in Dublin’s remaining three league matches.
He didn’t feature in any of the two Galway games, but he came back in for the first qualifier against Laois when Ger Cunningham took a sledgehammer to the starting 15.
Seven players came in. Some big names went out; Alan Nolan, Mikey Carton, Shane Durkin, ‘Dotsy’ O’Callaghan, David Treacy. With Cunningham picking players on form, Durkin and Dáire Plunkett came in for the Limerick game.
Anthony Daly was extremely loyal to certain players but Cunningham has tried to put his own stamp on matters and his rotational policy has ruffled feathers. On the week of the Limerick game, Mikey Carton, one of Dublin’s most experienced players, walked away in frustration.
Other players were unhappy with how they’d been treated. There were stories of unrest within the squad and that others were on the verge of walking. Yet the Limerick victory has bought Cunningham and his project more time before it can be fully judged in its first season.
It was always going to be a big challenge for Cunningham anyway. After Daly’s six years of setting the bar and transforming the culture of Dublin hurling, the biggest challenge for Cunningham was to come up to that level, or try and surpass that standard.
Cunningham is a different character and personality to Daly but he fitted a similar coaching profile and shared the same professional mindset of preparation and attention to detail. Cunningham had the ambition and experience to succeed but he still needed to be the right fit for Dublin in the way that Daly ideally was.
“Daly could relate to their mentality, identify with their struggle.”
The first half of Daly’s career was spent in the same purgatory in Clare that the Dublin players had become accustomed to before he took over. He could relate to their mentality, identify with their struggle.
Back then though, Dublin needed a manager to try and build on their underage momentum, to progressively establish a strong hurling culture, which would ultimately lead to success. Daly achieved most of those goals, but expectation levels were far higher by the time Cunningham took over.
Dublin had won a league and a Leinster title. They had been an established Division One team. Reaching a league semi-final was a great start but the manner in which they blew that game against Cork in April devalued the stock Cunningham had built up during the spring.
Even before he took over, there was any amount of challenges stacking up before Cunningham. Ten of the players which lost the 2014 All-Ireland quarter-final to Tipperary had featured at the same stage six years earlier.
The underage production line hadn’t been functioning at the same pace it was. For all the talk about the development of Dublin hurling, 12 of the players that featured against Tipp were from just four clubs – Ballyboden, Kilmacud, Lucan and Cuala.
From day one, Cunningham tried to shake it up. He tried Carton at full-back and Liam Rushe at full-forward. Daly had tried the same moves with both players and neither of them worked. Conal Keaney had also been recast as a half-back but, similar to Rushe, Cunningham restored him to his natural habitat.
Cunningham’s tactical set-up against the breeze in the first half of the Galway replay asked more hard questions of his management. Some of his decisions on the line that day exacerbated those questions but at least he was trying to mould his own team during the process of transition.
New players were given a chance to establish themselves; Cian O’Callaghan, Chris Crummy, Darragh O’Connell, Plunkett, Shane Barrett, Eamonn Dillon, Niall McMorrow, Cian Boland.
Daly had blooded most of them but many of those players are now the face of Cunningham’s new side. Eight of the starting team against Limerick didn’t start against Tipperary in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final.
Nobody is really sure just yet where this team is headed but the Limerick win was significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it erased many of the crippling doubts which had haunted the team since the Galway replay. Secondly, and more importantly, it’s been a long time since the Dubs won a game coming from eight points behind.
On a new journey and in a year of new starts for Dublin, that is as good a starting point as any ahead of an All-Ireland quarter-final.
- Dublin face Waterford in Semple Stadium at 2pm on Sunday
