They say you can take a player out of the county but you can’t take the county out of a player, and Ryan O’Dwyer doesn’t exactly disagree. He admits he will always be viewed by some as a former Tipperary hurler now playing for Dublin.
Not that O’Dwyer is the only blow-in: Sunday’s Allianz Hurling League semi-final sees Dublin manager Ger Cunningham facing off against Cork, the county with which he won three All-Irelands (as goalkeeper), and more recently coached, alongside Jimmy Barry-Murphy.
There is, O’Dwyer also suggests, no such thing as a complete shift in allegiance, although when it comes to real game time, the past is exactly that.
“I will say,” confirms O’Dwyer, “the first league game that we (Dublin) ever played against Tipp, I treated as any other game. But after the game I felt an adrenaline buzz. We’d beat them in the league, inside in Croke Park, for the first time in a long time, and I definitely felt something that day. But as regards approaching any game, whether it is Tipp or Cork or Kilkenny, I treat them all the same.”
Indeed for Cunningham, Sunday’s game at Nowlan Park is not new territory either: he’s already played Cork in the earlier rounds of the league, back on March 7th, and there was a lot of talk then about Cunningham’s potentially mixed emotions should Dublin beat them. Instead, it was hardly even a contest - Cork leading 0-21 to 0-8 at half-time, and winning by 11 points in the end.
O’Dwyer doesn’t believe that past allegiances had any influence on that result, because no player or manager can think that way: “No, I think he just went out and treated it as another game. Sometimes, when emotions are involved, you take your eye off the ball. That wasn’t the case the last day, and I certainly don’t think Ger’s involvement with Cork previously, and knowing all the players, was an issue.
“Obviously he was passionate about it, like he would be with any game, but to say that (he was) distracted from the game, no. The focus is a good performance, and if you’ve a good performance you’ll win the game. If you’ve a good performance and you don’t win the game, well then I don’t think you’ll be too gutted afterwards, because you’ll say ‘Right, the best team won.’ And I think Ger has that in his mind, that he can’t get emotionally attached to it, because if he does it will take from the focus of the game.”
At 28 O’Dwyer’s focus these days is unquestionably with Dublin. He first tasted Allianz League success with Tipperary, in 2008, then declared for Dublin, at the end of 2010, having first switched to Kilmacud Crokes, while also teaching in the capital. A year later he helped Dublin land their first league title since 1939, beating Kilkenny in the final (earning a man-of-the-match award in the process).
Now more than ever O’Dwyer also feels that a good showing in the league is pivotal to championship success. A year ago, having survived a relegation play-off against Waterford, Dublin essentially went into hibernation, something O’Dwyer feels possibly came against them.
“I don’t want to harp back to last year, but our last game was the relegation play-off, and from the time it got around to championship was a long lay-off. We went back to the clubs, then got back and tried to refocus again, but it was a long time, and I think did make a difference. We’ve already had more competitive games, closer to it this year, and hopefully one more after Sunday.
“But I also think the structure of championship might be looked at. You see in America, the Super Bowl is run off in 19 weeks, from start to finish. That includes weeks off, and there’s no reason that can’t be done in the GAA, if it was more streamlined. For the championship, if you could get it every two weeks, a game and recover, train hard with a week leading into a match - that would be brilliant.”
O’Dwyer fully expects to play some part on Sunday - either starting, or off the bench. He started in that heavy defeat to Cork in March, and still can’t figure out what went wrong for Dublin.
“It was a strange game, in that before, we felt we were ready for it, were very fresh, and the training had been great. Then we went out and they got a run on us. It was one of those days when whatever way the ball bounced, it was bouncing into a Cork hand. For the first half anyway. In the second half, we made a few changes. I was taken off, so that probably helped..! We came back, but we left ourselves too much work to do.
“Sunday is huge game now for both teams, regardless of championship down the line, or it being ‘only the league’. I’m sick of people saying this is ‘only the league’. In 2011, that was a massive thing for us, and it still is a massive thing for us. So I think this weekend, all four teams will want to go out and win, and then in two weeks’ time win again.”
