LockerRoom: Do you know what, but Saturday morning had a dreamlike quality. We had training with the kids and it was sunny but cold out there, so to get some heat into our bones we said we'd adjourn for refreshment. Consenting adults. Why not.
So on the way out we took a look at the under-11 camogie girls. They were on their way to winning their first-ever league game. You can't imagine that excitement.
Our route after that described a big square. Up Griffith Avenue on to the Ballymun Road, where suddenly there's gaggles of kids wearing Na Fianna gear and carrying their hurls out of Albert Park. Isn't that great to see, we said to ourselves, because we are nothing if not tolerant.
Across Collins Avenue, and we're stopping the car because there's girls crossing in Whitehall tracksuits. They had hurls and they're heading to a game so it would have been impolite to have run over them. Instead, we thought to ourselves that young ones out with hurleys on a Saturday is a wonderful sight.
Beaming at the world, we headed for a quick sasparilla in Killester, and 30 minutes later we're driving past half a dozen Craobh Ciarán kids on the Malahide Road swinging their sticks, and even though they're Craobhers we feel like bursting into song. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay, my oh my, etc, etc.
But we got a grip. Sorry. Thought for a while back there that we were living in a hurling county.
Kids everywhere with hurls. Of course, as Garret Fitzgerald might say that's all very fine in practice but it doesn't work in theory. Just because Dublin is alive with kids who want to take hurls in their hands and play the game doesn't mean the county board want to do anything about it. Leave them be and they'll get disheartened eventually. It's a phase they're going through.
Everyone goes through the phase. Everyone gets disheartened. Yesterday's trip to Waterford by the county senior hurlers was a lonely one. Mossy McGrane, who was an All Star nominee in 2003, dropped off the panel at the weekend. So too did Risteard Brennan, who started at midfield in Salthill and in the Walsh Cup against Kilkenny. This after a week in which two of the finest young hurlers in the county, Ronan Fallon and Philly Brennan, packed it in.
Not only are lads dropping off the panel quicker than fleas off a dead dog, but support is ebbing away too. Almost everyone I asked about a hike to Walsh Park yesterday declined mournfully. They couldn't bear to see what they might see. All so different from two years ago in Fraher Field in Dungarvan, when there was hope in the air and a 15-point Dub lead at half-time.
It must be lovely to be from Waterford or Tipp or Kilkenny or Clare or Galway or Cork at this time of the year. Even being from Limerick is something we'd settle for. Things are good or not so good, but there's always hope. And if there's no hope there's something being done. And if there's nothing being done there's war in the county board to get something done.
It must be nice to see young players who you have watched over the years breaking through or getting there. For Dublin, yesterday brought the third and most wretched of this season's series of double-digit defeats. We watched the first two. Like almost everyone else we hadn't the heart for yesterday.
This column gets e-mails every now and then from distraught Dublin hurling cognoscenti who ask why we don't "put the boot" into Humphrey Kelleher. The answer is easy and the answer is hard. First, it's not our job really to put the boot in anywhere. If something isn't working, that's the county board's concern and the concern of the players and the clubs. Humphrey has a good backroom team in place. The team are training regularly and hard.
Also, Humphrey is a nice and sincere man and not at all the kind of fella anyone would dream of putting the boot into. You could tell that by the reticence of departing players. At meetings, in player questionnaires, in the silent slip-aways, no player ever "puts the boot in".
It's an amateur game and when somebody is making an honest effort, well, you just wish it would work.
It's not working though, and no one is doing anything about it. There is some missed connection between Humphrey Kelleher and his players. Lads who love hurling have just walked away. Yet Humphrey, resiliently, defiantly, magnificently optimistic, talks about the programme and the long-term plan and advises that we wait and see.
The programme, the weights and the hard work, is scarcely original or unique though, and even if it were it's difficult to remember a Dublin hurling team being beaten for fitness or strength. The long-term plan has all the hope of working as one of Stalin's five-year plans. Dublin are slipping into Division Two, which status would render them ineligible for top-tier championship hurling. They are losing players so quickly the Kilmacud Crokes Sevens tournament might yet be the best trophy available for them to compete in.
It's too easy to shrug the shoulders at bad league form and pretend that it is just that: form. What you do in the league sets the tone for the rest of your year though. Nicky English pointed that out when the current league/championship formats were announced.
"I found in coaching that if guys aren't showing form in March or April they're not going to have it in the summer. Take the last couple of Kilkenny-Tipperary games in recent years. They've been of a high standard and ultra-competitive (although he excludes last year's high-scoring final between the counties, which he describes as "a bit false"). You need to show form. In general, teams doing well in the league will do well in the championship, or at least teams that aren't going well won't do well in the championship."
That's what's frightening. Dublin have no form and not much prospect of it. Morale is lower than a snake's belly. Some of the players look more awkward than a bustier on a frog.
Playing against O'Tooles and getting beaten by them in a recent challenge was a dumb move. O'Tooles are the home club of former manager Marty Morris and displaced captain Kevin Flynn. Great, loopy smirks went around the clubland of Dublin. What are they at?
What they are at is hard to know and painful to watch. The good underage sides of recent years have been borne away into oblivion. Everyone rallies and gets heavy of heart till eventually they don't rally at all. Dublin have barely a pulse left.
No sign of the emergency services though. Help.
