Meath game a measure of what Dublin have lost, Galway in Salthill will test further

The 42

17-05-2025

THERE WAS A moment in Navan last month, when everything that was certain about Dublin was wiped out in a single play.
Even when they trailed Meath by 12 points at half-time, there were few who went to the garden shed to get the shovel to go bury them..
With the new rules weaponised by a stiff breeze at their backs, double digit leads are not what they used to be.
After all, Dublin came from 11 back in Tralee to beat Kerry earlier in the year while weeks later they slammed the brakes on what threatened to be an Armagh rout in the Athletic Grounds, hitting the All-Ireland champions for 1-8 without reply to claw back respectability if not the result.
And Meath, weighed down by a decade and a half of metal scar tissue, are no Kerry or Armagh.
We had all seen this movie before; Dublin offers one of their unfortunate Leinster housemates a glimpse of an ajar door to freedom and then they grind them down and slam it shut in their faces.
They would do so in a relentless and ruthless manner, composed and dead-eyed, absolutely certain in what they call 'the process'.
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Except, it never felt like that. They were less like surgeons with scalpels, and more like barroom brawlers on their back, throwing out haymakers, some connecting with jaw bones but mostly swiping thin air.
Still, it got them to within three points with little over five minutes left when they got the ball into the hands of Ciaran Kilkenny, 50 odd metres from the Meath posts.
For all that has changed with Dublin, he is the constant that was so central in how they morphed from being a football team to a blue killing machine under Jim Gavin.
Dublin's Ciaran Kilkenny. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
When teams sat hunkered down for cover, he was the one who would be trusted with the ball to set in a play a sequence of plays, almost exclusively lateral, waiting for the one moment of lost concentration that would open the channel, through which they would draw blood.
So trusted was he in protecting that ball that in an age where commercial ambassadorial opportunities are always just one phone call away for inter-county players, it was a mystery that Kilkenny's visage was never emblazoned across one of those security stronghold vans as a reminder that its contents were not open to being turned over.
But this time, there was no raised hand to strike cold fear into their opponents, instead he dropped his poker faced mask, turned and fired off a Hail Mary kick that did not go near the posts and fell preciously into Meath hands.
Why Kilkenny played like a knee-trembling minor rather than a sergeant major may well go to the heart of Dublin's dysfunction.
It most likely was down to a matter of trust; in that he no longer had the same level, if any, in his new look team compared to the side he once orchestrated.
It was a moment as good as any to take a measure of what Dublin has lost. Just because it is obvious, does not mean that it is not relevant, but the close season exodus of generational talents has left Dublin, at best, a good team, but no longer even a blood relation of being a great one.
Go back to that play, and had Brian Fenton, James McCarthy, Michael Fitzsimons, Jack McCaffery and Paul Mannion all been on that pitch, would Kilkenny have closed his eyes and booted the ball on the back of a novena of prayers, or would be simply have raised his hand and let the process deliver? No prizes for the correct answer.
It is not that Dublin has fallen off a cliff. Dessie Farrell has been hamstrung by a series of injuries to the likes of Evan Comerford, Eoin Murchan, Lee Gannon, Cian Murphy and, most critically of all, Sean Bugler who if he gets back will allow them to compete, although contending might be a stretch.
The irony, though, now as they head into an All-Ireland group stage that would almost certainly be their undoing but for the GAA's stubbornness in leaving a failed format in place that will see just one team eliminated, is that it is not just who they have lost that is hurting, but possibly also who they have kept.
Of all the stats spat out this season, the one that jarred most was when Hugh O'Sullivan stood between the posts against Wicklow, to become Dublin's fourth goalkeeper in just eight games.
In a new world, where the goalkeeper is the most important position in the game, Dublin's selection process in preparation for this has felt less like strategic planning and more like speed dating.
Stephen Cluxton of Dublin. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
Circumstances may not have been Dessie Farrell's friend given Evan Comerford's battle for fitness, and the sense was that this was to be his year amid talk pre season that Stephen Cluxton's return to Dublin would be in a coaching capacity.
However, as remarkable as the latter's tenure between the posts has been, it has also come at a price.
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After all, did it play a factor in Na Fianna's David O'Hanlon's absence from the squad, given the futility of being third in line?
Two years ago, O'Hanlon was ever present during the league campaign and impressed, never more so than in Navan, where he beat a high Meath press more than once as Dublin retained 18 out of their 22 kick-outs.
What Dublin and Cluxton would not have given for those figures last month as Meath feasted in the opening half on Cluxton's kick-out.
Of course, the latter operated in a far more challenging environment, one which now enables teams to press without emptying themselves because of the 40 metre arc but as great as he is, Cluxton is flesh and bone.
Age is a number and all of that, but as he eyeballs a Galway team on Saturday with the most dominant middle eight in the game and on a Salthill pitch where squalling wind is hardly a stranger, he could be forgiven if he too does not contemplate on the cast iron truth, which states that after the peak of greatness, there is only decline.