Maybe last year's Leinster title appeared like a mirage for Dublin's hurlers after another provincial trimming from Kilkenny on Sunday. Apart from last year's historic success after a replay, the past six campaigns have featured defeat at the hands of Brian Cody's team and of them only the first in 2009 could be described as polite.
Dublin captain Johnny McCaffrey has been on board for all of it and he was at a loss to explain Sunday's 0-24 to 1-9 blow-out.
“Yeah, it’s hard to know. With 15 minutes to go we had a couple of goal chances and if they had gone in, it could have been a different story. We never seemed to get going for the whole thing. We were just a bit flat overall.
“I was very surprised. It’s the Leinster final; it’s a big day. We’ve played in a lot of them before. It’s just hard to put our finger on what went wrong right now.
“Even in the first half, a couple of balls went in and the little breaks seemed to always fall to a Kilkenny lad. I know they probably had an extra man there as well but on other days, the breaks would go the other way and you’d be clear through for a goal or whatever. We never seemed to click as a unit and that’s really hard to put our finger on why.”
Dublin have previously reached an All-Ireland semi-final through the qualifier route after beating Limerick in 2011 and McCaffrey believes that the rehabilitation process doesn't have to be extensive.
“Hopefully not that long. Personally I’m looking forward to getting back training straight away. A defeat like that, you want to get it out of your system. Ideally we’d have a match next week, that’d be great. You just really want to get down, work hard, and get that out of your system by playing better the next day.”
Last year's Leinster win was Dublin's first in 52 years. They retained their Division One A status in this year's league and the competent win in Wexford Park last month looked to be a sign that the county had broken away from the one-year-on and one-year-off syndrome that has characterized progress in the past six seasons.
In fact by Saturday evening the form line looked even better after Wexford went so close to defeating All-Ireland champions Clare in their back yard. McCaffrey disagrees that last season’s achievements created additional burdens of expectation.
“I don’t think there was any major pressure from outside, but inside we wanted to give the performance and that’s what we didn’t do. If we had done that, we would have had a great chance of winning. That’s what we were looking for ourselves, for us to perform on the day, and that didn’t happen.
“I think you can look back during the week and analyse the whole thing, the lead-up to the game and the game itself. At the end of the day, they were the better team on the day. We didn’t turn up and they got the trophy.”
