In the airless squeeze of a Kilkenny endgame, nobody has found it harder to catch a breath than Dublin.
Since the championship format changed in 2018, three times Dublin have either led or been level with Kilkenny as the game was in its death throes. All three games ended with a Kilkenny victory.
In 2018, Pat Gilroy’s first game in charge had Dublin 3-15 to 0-23 ahead in the 72nd minute. Paddy Smyth took a brilliant catch coming out of defence but under a challenge lost his hurl and might even, on another day, have been given a free. Not this time though and the ball squirted loose, sending Liam Blanchfield away. Smyth tried to hack him down from behind – this was in the pre-black card penalty days – but Blanchfield kept his feet and batted to the net.
In 2020, in an empty Croke Park, Dublin managed to somehow haul in a 15-point deficit to level matters in the 72nd minute through Daire Gray. But substitutes Alan Murphy and full-back Huw Lawlor both found points from somewhere when the necessity was absolute. For both Lawlor and Murphy, it was the only point either of them scored in the championship that year.
Three weeks ago, the game was level in the 70th minute when Billy Ryan latched on to Paddy Deegan’s spooned pass in Parnell Park. Referee Johnny Murphy had been strict in his policing of the steps rule all day but found his liberal side just this once, allowing the Kilkenny sub to take seven strides before putting Eoin Cody away. Cody’s finish was lethal as a Navy Seal and Kilkenny were away and gone.
The point is not that the ball bounced Kilkenny’s way on all three occasions. The point is that Dublin, through three different management regimes and a wholesale reimagining of their playing staff, have continually left it to the bounce of a ball. And duly suffered the consequences. Nobody takes the dictum that Kilkenny are never beaten more literally than Dublin.
In one sense, it’s not necessarily Kilkenny who are the problem here. Since 2018, Dublin have played in 13 championship matches that finished with a goal or less between them and their opposition. Their record in those 13 games reads: Won 3 Lost 6 Drew 4. Maybe Dublin just have a deep-rooted problem when the pressure is at its eye-popping highest.
But then again, in another sense, Kilkenny are definitely the problem – half of Dublin’s defeats in tight matches have come against the black and amber. Crucially too, they’ve never got revenge. Dublin have had nail-biting defeats to Galway, Wexford and Laois in that spell but they’ve also either beaten or drawn with them in matches decided by three or less. They can’t say that about Kilkenny.
Of course, the vast majority of the players can’t say anything good about their record against Kilkenny, in tight matches or otherwise. Of the current panel, only Danny Sutcliffe is still around from the team that recorded Dublin’s last championship victory in the fixture, back in 2013.
[ Dublin finally rise above Kilkenny to reach finalOpens in new window ]
There’s a handful of Kilkenny players still around from that replay defeat in Portlaoise – Eoin Murphy, Conor Fogarty, Cillian Buckley, Walter Walsh and TJ Reid were all on the pitch that day. But otherwise, none of the Kilkenny squad know what it’s like to lose to Dublin in the championship.
None of them have experienced it in the league either, for that matter. The last time Dublin won a springtime encounter against the Cats was in 2015, backing up their 2014 victory in the same competition.
But the Kilkenny players on those sides were from the last remnants of the great team – Henry Shefflin came off the bench in 2014, Jackie Tyrrell was still in the number 4 shirt in 2015. In fact, Cillian Buckley is the youngest Kilkenny player to lose a game in league or championship against Dublin – and he’ll be 32 next month.
That has to be a factor. The team that never beats the team that never loses to them has to feel the weight of that record going into the final knockings. In the move that led to the Eoin Cody goal three weeks ago, it was noticeable that some of the aggression that had put Dublin in such a good position went missing.
Mikey Butler was given a few more yards of space from a Kilkenny puck-out than he’d been allowed for most of the night. Martin Keoghan was first on to Butler’s 50/50 long ball. Deegan tiptoed along the sideline without being shouldered out over it before finding Ryan. Even Conor Donoghue’s tackle on Cody was standoffish, although we can presumably mark that down as another win for the black card/penalty rule.
Even so, the fact stands – with the game level in the 70th minute, Dublin allowed Kilkenny to go the length of the pitch from a short puck-out and conceded a killer goal without a tackle worthy of the name. It was as if they were waiting to be beaten, in accordance with the usual terms and conditions.
Micheál Donohue has changed plenty about this Dublin side in terms of the speed they move the ball and the security they’ve fostered in defence especially. But until they find a way to grab a chair against Kilkenny when the music has stopped, they will continue to be dismissed as the same old Dublin.
