Dublin legend Connolly says 'massive question marks' remain despite Galway win

Irish Daily Mirror

20-05-2025

Diarmuid Connolly has said there are still 'massive question marks' around Dublin as he challenged them to back up their Galway win.
After a shock defeat to Meath last month, their first in the Leinster Championship for 15 years, the Dubs got their season back on track with a stirring one-point victory in Salthill against Padraic Joyce's fancied side.
It makes Group 4 all the more interesting as champions Armagh open their All-Ireland series at home to Derry on Saturday before tackling Dublin at Croke Park eight days later.
"For their own campaign this year, if they have ambitions to go on and win Sam Maguire, this needs to be a statement game for them,' said Connolly of the Armagh visit.
'They need to put back-to-back results together. Even if they don't get the win, they need to put a performance together and then they'll know exactly where they're at going forward.
'Derry are a little bit of an unknown. We haven't seen them in a good few weeks. But what I've been hearing on the ground is that they're playing a lot of friendlies, they're putting it up to big teams in these friendlies and we know the personnel they have.
'Dublin didn't want to have two losses in the first two games and then go up to Derry looking for a result to get a preliminary quarter-final. It's a great start but there has to be more to come."
What the Galway game has proved is that Dublin clearly still have what it takes to mix it with the best sides on their day but to win an All-Ireland they'll need to produce a series of performances of that standard and higher.
And, Connolly says, they still have to prove that they can do that.
'Yeah, it's an unknown, it's an absolute unknown for Dublin. We don't know whether they can put back-to-back performances together. We haven't seen it over the last three or four years.
'Yeah, good performance on Saturday against Galway, but if they don't back it up in two weeks' time, then there'll be still huge question marks about them.
'I think that win will get them a quarter-final, but again, three games from there can make or break your season.
'There would be massive question marks for me whether Dublin can put three back-to-back performances together, but that's the challenge they have, I suppose, and hopefully we can see one or two of these guys that are on the fringe make themselves household names over the summer.'
A number of the established stars, and Ciaran Kilkenny in particular, were central to last weekend's result, with some even labelling it as the 31-year-old's best ever performance for Dublin, though BoyleSports ambassador Connolly stopped just short of that.
"Certainly leadership-wise, yeah. I suppose a lot of the ball goes through Ciarán when he does play. But it's not the balls that he had in his hands, it was the stuff he did off the ball for me that was huge.
'I remember with 50-odd minutes on the clock, Shane Walsh gets a ball up on the wing and he's the first man to make contact with him. He pushed him out over the line and won the ball back for Dublin. And in that subsequent play, he went up and kicked a score.
'That's huge. The energy a turnover gives your team is massive but then to get up the field and kick the ball over the bar in the same play was unbelievable.
'It probably wasn't his best game for Dublin as in skill-wise or even possession-wise, but his overall leadership was absolutely second to none really and it gave Dublin the impetus to go after Galway.
'He was probably the second tackle in on all their big plays. Cillian McDaid gets the ball, he gets stopped up, Ciarán's coming in with the second-man tackle in nearly every play in that game. He was everywhere. So from a leadership point of view, he was immense.'
Kilkenny's form had been questionable, particularly against Meath, though Connolly said that 'certainly based on the performance on Saturday, there's no decline'.
He added: 'It's very hard to get up for a game down in Wicklow too. Going down to Aughrim in the Leinster Championship, it's a different kettle of fish.
'When you know your back is up against the wall, going to Salthill for the first round of the All-Ireland Championship, it's nearly a different mindset. Everybody had bashed Dublin over the last couple of weeks and the big players will always answer those calls.
'I thought Ciarán on Saturday, it was a man-of-the match performance for Dublin, he kicked three points, led the team from start to finish. I think he'll have a lot of football to play this year.'