IT DOESN’T STOP HERE...
Strong team culture means that even a raft of retirements won’t derail blue machine
IN keeping with the pathway they have blazed through history, the conversation about this magnificent team has moved on.
It is no longer a question of just how great they are, but rather how they have become the epitome of that quality.
There is a line that true greatness consists of being great in little things. Perhaps when Jim Gavin got hold of them in the autumn of 2012, he pinned that mantra to their dressing room wall. These days, though, they don’t need to read it because in every fibre of their being, they preach it.
If the secret of this Dublin team’s success is their capacity to keep doing the simple things right, it should be a blueprint that others can replicate.
That is has not been possible for a number of reasons.
Of course, their latest success will invite furrow-browed analysis in the coming months about the advantages which have been conferred on them centrally by the GAA, but that misses the point.
Yes, those advantages have played a part, but a Blue Wave strategy and a wealth of resources would amount to very little if not for the quite extraordinary group driving this thing.
They dig deeper, they run harder, they tackle sharper and they play smarter than everyone else.
They are empowered to do all these things because they are led by a gifted manager in Jim Gavin, and because their dressing room houses some of the greatest players that have ever played.
All that quality was showcased on Saturday night, when they cruelly reminded Kerry that you only get one shot at taking this team down.
For all the talk that Dublin might have been spooked by Kerry’s menace in the drawn game, it worked the other way.
It was Kerry who blinked and it was Dublin who took corrective action.
Despite starting with four specialist midfielders — Diarmuid O’Connor replacing Gavin White — Kerry failed to dial up the heat on Stephen Cluxton’s restarts, fearful that the goal they conceded to Jack McCaffrey in the drawn game would be repeated.
But in trying to avoid a dagger through the heart, they were bled to death by a thousand cuts.
That is the beauty of the champions, if they don’t hurt you one way, they will find another.
Kerry’s reticence played into Gavin’s hands, accentuating the value of playing with a sweeper.
It not only meant that Eoin Murchan became a short receiver for Cluxton’s restarts, but it also meant that Kerry’s strategy of going direct to Paul Geaney was turned right back on them, with three turnovers in the Dublin square returned for points inside the opening six minutes.
And, of course, the most obvious dividend of starting Murchan paid off in the opening seconds of the second half, when he scorched grass — albeit after taking a dozen steps without playing the ball — to fire to the net.
Yet again, Gavin’s intuition of making a game-defining change was decisive. He did the same in 2017 when Michael Fitzsimons was named man of the match in that year’s replay.
But more than anything, it is the culture of collective responsibility and trust Gavin has cultivated that has made all this possible. They are the ultimate whack-amole-team for a reason.
‘What I love about our team is you don’t look around and go, “If they take him out, they lose”. There’s a massive trust that, if you aren’t doing it, you just keep working and one of the lads will get you over the line,’ explained Jack McCaffrey yesterday.
McCaffrey was man of the match in the drawn game. Hampered by a hamstring strain, he was on the fringes of this contest before being benched at half-time. And yet his absence was hardly noticed.
Others put their hands up. Ciarán Kilkenny, who barely registered in the drawn game, bordered on unplayable on Saturday evening, and ended up as an equal stakeholder in 12 points from open play with Paul Mannion and Con O’Callaghan, which amounted to nine points more than all three managed in the drawn game.
It can be argued that their brilliance was facilitated by Kerry fear. One of the by-products of Kerry not pressing aggressively was that they defended deep and zonal, in the process inviting Dublin’s
“Kerry’s hope is that Dublin will be sated”
shooters to fatten themselves inside the scoring zone.
Of course, had Kerry kept faith in the risk and reward strategy they engaged in the drawn game, the chances are that they would still have been left on their knees at the death, watching as Cluxton lifted the Sam Maguire trophy for the fifth year on the bounce.
That is the thing when you play Dublin, you can stick or twist but either way they make you pay.
Kerry’s hope — and it will be one shared by a number of others in a shrivelled pack — is that Dublin will be sated by planting their flag at the game’s very summit.
It will almost certainly prompt change, with the likelihood that this could be the moment when Gavin chooses to take his leave, while a number of senior players, including Cluxton, may follow.
That may be viewed as a changing of the guard but the convincing manner of this win — and had Niall Scully and Diarmuid Connolly not spurned final quarter goal chances the margin would have been greater — suggests that they are hardly finished yet.