Con O'Callaghan's loss highlights how long it's been since Dublin found a diamond

Irish Times

a day ago

No
Con
. That's what they're telling us anyway. If Hamlet was a Central Council delegate, he'd point out that the rules around intercounty teams announcing their squads on a Friday – and, more to the point, sticking with them across the weekend – have been honoured more in the breach than the observance during this championship. But even so, it seems that this one is likely true.
Dublin
are about to play a significant championship match without Con O'Callaghan for the first time since
Kerry
beat them in 2023. When the squad for the weekend was announced late on Thursday night, his name was the first and last thing most people looked for. If you got sent a screenshot, it was the only comment worth making or worth receiving. No Con.
For all the good Dublin would have taken out of nicking the win in Salthill a fortnight ago, suddenly
Dessie Farrell's
cupboard undeniably looks a little bare.
Armagh
are coming to HQ to face a Dublin squad – and again, we're taking it on trust here that the 26 Dessie Farrell has named is the 26 that will be fielded – in which no fewer than 10 players have never started a championship game in Croke Park. Eight of them have never played a minute of championship football there full-stop.
With Con in the mix, that might get brushed over or feel like a kind of a statistical quirk. Dublin could rely on him to bang in a goal and pop over a few two-pointers and lay on a few more and generally just Be Con. As long as he's doing that, who really cares what names are filling out the bench?
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Without Con, suddenly the humble Dub is shook. You mean to tell us that 40 per cent of the Dublin squad don't have their own bespoke ass groove in the Hogan Stand dressingroom nearest the Hill? That anything up to half a dozen of them might get their first taste of champo at Croker this weekend with the All-Ireland champions pawing the dirt and hunting for scalps? Isn't that sort of thing only supposed to happen to hayseeds and culchies?
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If nothing else, Con's absence this weekend will probably mean that the churn in the Dublin panel will become far more obvious to far more people than has heretofore been the case. Of the starting 15 who played Galway in last year's All-Ireland quarter-final, five have left the squad and two more are injured. That septet reads Mick Fitzsimons, Brian Fenton, James McCarthy, Paul Mannion, Jack McCaffrey, Eoin Murchan and now Con O'Callaghan.
James McCarthy and Michael Fitzsimons after last year's All-Ireland quarter-final against Galway. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
Widen it out and of the 26-man panel who suited up for that Galway game, only 15 are named this weekend. For the sake of comparison, look at Galway then and Galway now. Of the 26 named by Pádraic Joyce last June, 21 are in the panel this weekend. Thirteen of the starting 15 are named to start again.
In and of itself, a bit of churn is no harm. It's to be welcomed, in fact. Keeps everyone pulling on the rope, trying to find the inches. It feels like no time at all since Bernard Brogan was spending a full season torturing himself at training just to make the match day 26 for an All-Ireland final replay. But of course that's six years ago now. A lifetime.
It's so long in the past that some of the Dublin players who have come through to fill the gaps left by the immortals are already longer in the tooth than you think. Colm Basquel is 29, Paddy Small is 28, Seán Bugler and Seán MacMahon are both 27, Peadar Ó Coifigh Byrne is 26. The supporting cast in the times of plenty who are the officer class now – the likes of Davy Byrne, Cormac Costello and Niall Scully – are all either 31 or 32 this year. It won't be long until they start ageing out too.
Now look. This is clearly a first-world problem. The Liffey will not dry up, Dublin will not run short on footballers. But equally, it's been obvious for a while that for all the demographic and financial advantages at their disposal, Dublin haven't been bringing through anything like the quality of player that was once routine.
When the rest of the country wrung its hands over the idea of a permanent Dub empire, it was the annual injection of elite quality that really scared the horses. It started with McCarthy in 2011, Kilkenny and Dean Rock in 2012, Mannion and McCaffrey in 2013, Fenton and John Small in 2015, O'Callaghan in 2016, Murchan and Brian Howard in 2018. The key attribute they all shared wasn't just that they were so good, it was that they were so good so very quickly.
Of those 10 players, eight were under 25 when they won their first All Star. Only Rock and Small had to wait until they were older than that and both had won multiple All-Irelands by then anyway and nobody doubted their worth. By contrast, of the 14 All Stars Dublin have won this decade, only two have gone to players under the age of 25. Con and Eoin Murchan were both 24 in 2020 – since then, the youngest Dub to win an All Star was then 27-year-old Basquel in 2023.
The point is, it's a very long time since Dublin produced anyone that immediately got the Hill abuzz. Lee Gannon is probably the closest but he's been wracked by injuries since his debut season. Otherwise, it's been a lot of dutiful, solid, honest players who come in and do their job and keep the Dublin show rolling.
As for the remaining all-timers, Stephen Cluxton is 107, John Small and Ciarán Kilkenny are 32 and O'Callaghan himself is 29. Dublin are going to need to source some stardust from somewhere in the coming years.
Nothing will highlight that more than a weekend with no Con.