Leinster SFC Quarter-final/Dublin:Why have Dublin failed to find a steady flow of top-class footballers? Tom Humphriesasks those in the know.
Hollywood, Dublin 3. The bright and spangled Dubs face off with Meath tomorrow in the first blockbuster of the summer. House Full signs flash lucratively. The Hill, crammed with blue, quakes gorgeously while the plot moves towards a happy ending. Dublin have top billing and should win. If they do, though, who will rush out to tell the world that they have seen the future and that it is sky blue? When the Dubs unveil themselves tomorrow they need to answer more questions than a Leaving Cert student prepares for.
Have they exorcised the self doubt which sees them prodigally squander handsome leads. Has the line got the cold blood to think through problems when the air is dense with smoke and shrapnel? Dublin have opted for a half forward line which wraps one rookie and one injury-plagued veteran around the cause celebre of last year's loss to Mayo, Shane Ryan. People will recall that Ryan's baffling journey from singularly effective midfielder to wing back to first-hand witness to Andy Moran's goal was central to last year's terminal trauma.
Elsewhere, Ross McConnell, a Sigerson winning midfielder, plays full back after a brief apprenticeship. Diarmuid Connolly, an unfocussed genius is a gamble at wing forward. His debut campaign in this year's league was bookended interestingly. Under lights and before 82,000 people against Tyrone, Connolly looked, as he often does, like a young Maurice Fitzgerald languidly torturing a northern defence.
He finished the league by missing his team's last game (with Kerry) for disciplinary reasons. Dublin are working hard on Connolly. Tomorrow will tell us plenty. Diarmuid Connolly could be an All Star by the end of this year or he could be a footnote. The choice will be his.
By the end of this year too, Dublin may be accepting the retirement notices of Ciarán Whelan and Jason Sherlock. They have one All Star between them (Whelan's in 1999), but that absence of impact on the national stage is inversely proportional to their importance to Dublin teams over the last decade.
Sherlock, persistently underestimated since his debut season in 1995 (when his fellow intercounty players peevishly denied him an All Star) is one of the best distributors of a ball in the game. His work-rate, invention and dedication are crucial to the Dublin set-up. There is no obvious replacement.
To his own bemusement, Whelan is celebrated more widely for his periodic missing-in-action episodes than for what he does when in the trenches. Whatever your view, there seems little doubt that there is no obvious replacement waiting in the wings.
"I haven't seen a Brian Mullins in Dublin football since Brian stopped playing," says Timmy McCarthy, an experienced referee within the county and the manager of this year's county minor side who exited the championship a few weeks ago after a replay to Laois. "If Dublin had a Darragh Ó Sé they could win an All-Ireland. There is no Darragh coming through."
"We aren't producing midfielders" says Pauric McDonald, minor manager in 2006, "or outstanding man-markers or outstanding corner forwards or outstanding free-takers. There are deficits in many areas if you want to be critical. Soccer is strong, rugby. The kids are playing two or three or four sports. In Down or Tyrone or Mayo or Donegal or Kerry, players spend 100 per cent of their time developing themselves as Gaelic footballers. In Dublin they might be spending 25 per cent. At that level it begins to show."
When Dublin exited the minor championship to Laois a few weeks ago it made 2007 the fourth year in a row in which the county have failed to make the provincial minor final. Laois, on the other hand, have been Leinster finalists in seven of the last 11 years and this year's side look a good bet to go that far and further.
Dublin's under-21 side exited the championship in February by losing at home to a Meath side which, in turn, failed to reach the provincial final.
The county's recent success rate at under-21 level is better than at minor. Laois, however, have put together back-to-back Leinster titles in the grade and even at this juncture are favourites to repeat that again next year.
It cannot be the case that from 1995 onwards Laois have been lucky in finding great players coming through their ranks and Dublin have just been unlucky. It can hardly be the case either that, almost a decade after the inception of the development squad system in Dublin, all those graduated players are merely good enough to keep Dublin somewhere between the ranking of third and sixth in the country.
Where are the summa cum laude graduates, the special ones? Will we ever produce somebody graduating egregia cum laude? Is the system failing and if so why?
"If I was to talk about my own situation with the minors this year," says Timmy McCarthy, "I know that the county board are trying to get fixtures fitted in, but the players had nine fixtures in between the Meath game (April 7th) and the Laois game (five weeks later).
"That included four championship games, for a lot of players who are doing the Leaving. I gave them a break after the Meath game, but all players were expected to play Bank Holiday Monday, the Wednesday and the following Sunday. They had two matches a week after that. A lot of key players picked up injuries. I'm not putting the blame on the county board, but there are too many fixtures at a time when the county team is preparing."
Gerard O'Connor, games manager with the county board agrees. The county board is under constant siege on the issue of fixtures. Pleasing some of the people some of the time is the most that can hoped for.
"Fixtures I think might negate the efforts of minor managers trying to prepare teams. There are a huge amount of fixtures from the beginning of year to Leaving Cert. Dublin is unique in that most fellas play football and hurling. So they have a match every week at least. Very little time for collective county stuff. The current minor teams have found it difficult to factor in when they will get it together. Club activity is as important as intercounty. You deal with a wider audience, but if you don't take your most talented players and mould them together it is very difficult to expect success. There has to be time to develop them. That is something that we have to try to address.
"If, on the one hand, the criticism is that we are not successful and, on the other hand, we are not allowing teams opportunities to develop, something has to give. In Laois, most of the development squad work takes place on a Saturday. No club fixtures. Very few players playing football and hurling."
The dual player issue is a massive problem in Dublin, a fact being gradually accepted even by those misty-eyed nostalgists who recall that playing both games didn't do Des Foley any harm. Of the Dublin forwards who take the field tomorrow, Conal Keaney, Mossie Quinn, Jason Sherlock, Shane Ryan and Diarmuid Connolly could all have had careers as intercounty hurlers. This year's Dublin minor football and hurling sides carry 11 dual players. The county isn't getting the best out of them. Can't be.
"When you have a dual player he is operating on about a quarter of the time that a player with a one-code commitment would be devoting to developing his game." says Gerard O'Connor. "The Gooch would have had one focus. He would have been fully concentrating on football, getting quality coaching all the way up and getting his rest and development. His equivalent in Dublin operates on a quarter of that.
"He is training with football, he is training with hurling, he is playing matches in both codes. His games to coaching ratio is all wrong. How can you compete if you are not specialising. We have to afford players the opportunity to pick one squad and let the decision rest with the player. Picking doesn't mean you have to stick with it for life. It doesn't happen anywhere else. It's not happening anywhere else. It's too much to juggle."
Ciarán Dorney is a first year dual minor for the county this year and one of the county's finest young talents in both football and hurling. He is familiar with both the pressure and its effects on young players, their talent and their study.
His Leaving Certificate begins on Wednesday. "There's a lot of pressure. I've been training right up to last week. Even this week they wanted us to train with the county hurlers. Not that much pressure to do that, but they asked. There is always a clash between the football and the hurling. One manager will say he really wants you to train with them when he knows there is a big match coming up with the other team.
"I'd be training six days a week, sometimes twice a day. I'd train for the school and then go to Dublin training later on. Then there is pressure in the club not to go to Dublin training. You try to let the managers sort it out, let them come up with a solution, but a few times I have had to make a decision and then you get stick from one side because you made the decision."
As one of those 11 dual players operating between the minor football and hurling squads this year, he feels the impact on his game and sees the toll on players around him.
"I've seen it on the panels this year. A few dual players just have to take weeks off because they are just doing too much and they feel burnt out. It does affect you. Nobody has suggested apart from my Dad (the hurling coach Ben Dorney) just to concentrate on one game. After minor I might make a choice between them. It has a big effect on your study, fitting in homework and fitting school in around matches and training. As well as sessions six days a week, during school there would be three matches a week.
"Sometimes I have to go from one match to another straight away. You are just totally wiped out. No option to study. Maybe going from a club match to a county minor friendly match. You have to switch concentration very fast. You might be hurling. Then playing football. It's very hard to get worked up for a big game. I'd be a good bit better at either of them if I was just playing one. This year my hurling suffered earlier in the year because I played so much football early on. I went back and the touch just wasn't there."
Ciarán Dorney hopes to study quantity surveying in DIT next year, but his experiences this year have prompted one decision already.
"I didn't apply for a sports scholarship this year because I just mightn't want to play so much next year. I've seen what I have to do this year and if I want to do anything else other than sport that won't be possible next year. I want to have that choice."
Ciarán Dorney's situation isn't untypical of the way that young talent gets used in Dublin. The development squad system is designed to apply the varnish of quality coaching to promising players. It can become part of a treadmill though. Pauric McDonald, a full-time development officer with Kilmacud Crokes, perhaps the model for successfully run big clubs in Dublin, defends the system, but concedes there are flaws.
"Development squads get a lot of flak, especially in years when we don't go well. I was involved in the first one with Gerry McCaul back in 1998. Bryan Cullen was under-14. We followed them through to 2002. We came up short that year, but in 2001 Dublin got to an All-Ireland and the same in 2003. So take it from 1998 to 2003 the system was working and on top of that the county won an All-Ireland under-21.
"In the last couple of years whether you put it down to bad luck or what it hasn't been as successful. I think that's a huge part of it, though, bad luck in recent years.
"I think an aspect of the system that is wrong at the minute, even though I have benefited from it, is that you follow the squad through the system and you get them at under-18 for one year. Last year we went out to Offaly in the semi-final. We beat Westmeath in the quarter-final. I would have rated them the best team in Leinster. We had six goal chances against Offaly and 15 wides. They caught us on the break for two goals. We were beaten. We would have learned so much going through that. Then you are gone. Look at the Downs, Tyrones and Kerrys. Their successful managers are left in place for anything up to five or six years watching guys come through."
The Dublin county football championship is at an interval right now and for the paying customers who endured the dire opening acts that is no bad thing. Were those customers at a cinema they would probably slip home unconcerned about how the final reels might unspool. Hope though is what brings bodies through turnstiles and the persistent hope is that when things resume after the Dublin football's team summer adventure is done, that the fare will be better.
Precedent suggests otherwise.
"The players just aren't there." says Timmy McCarthy. "I have sympathy for Pillar Caffrey. I referee senior football in Dublin. There is nobody out there that he has missed. The standard is shocking. I don't know if we are falling down at club level or what. I can't put my finger on it. When I took the development panel over at 14 I was doing drills using both feet and using both hands and tackling properly. Lots of them had never done this stuff in their lives."
"The standard is poor." says Pauric McDonald. "Take the top four, five clubs out and there are a lot of mismatches, a lot of poor games in the first and second rounds of the championship. Maybe the hurlers have gone in the right step - 12 senior clubs and four regional teams. I don't know if anyone has done a study but there are a huge number of players playing in the Dublin senior football championship who aren't eligible for a Dublin senior team. That's a factor too.
"One of the criticisms of the development system in Dublin is that people claim that if you get on at under-14 you are nearly sure of being on it at under-18 and others are overlooked. I know for a fact, because we have the records, that over the course of the years we were there for instance we had up to 240 different players involved in squads, from trial matches to blocks. We worked it in blocks. Easter, early summer, late summer and Halloween . You coach for seven, eight, nine weeks and culminate in a tournament or challenge matches.
"It was open-ended with people in and out. We would have held trials every year. I would be very confident in saying we had seen all the talent in Dublin and given everyone a chance. That is hard to do."
One noticeable aspect over the last couple of years, but especially this year when Dublin's minors faced what was an exceptionally physically mature Laois side (two players, Johnny O'Loughlin and 16-year-old Donie Kingston went on to appear in the All-Ireland under-21 final which Laois were unlucky to lose to Cork), was the disparity in physique.
The sides drew in Parnell Park after extra-time on a Saturday afternoon, but had to play again on the Wednesday evening. Dublin managed to stay ahead for 20 minutes, but then collapsed having conceded a goal late in the first half.
"That was another factor," says Timmy McCarthy. "The half-time stats showed that Laois had won 95 per cent of the ball in midfield. That's how dominant they were. We aren't producing midfielders. We aren't producing that big type of ball-winning player."
There are other difficulties too. This year's Dublin minor side contained five players from Kilmacud Crokes. They attend three different schools, a typical dispersal. "That is a huge concern" says Gerard O'Connor. "So many players scattered all over the place. There are no traditional nursery schools like Jarlath's in Tuam or Pat's of Navan where you have anything up to 10 clubs feeding into the same school. You don't have that concentration. Successful counties invariably have at least one of those schools operating."
In strategically reviewing the system other facets have come up for scrutiny. Stephen O'Shaughnessy, the Dublin defender, has been appointed to co-ordinate between development squads, ensuring some sort of unity of approach. As Pauric Mcdonald says, "you get given a development squad and you could be running them up and down mountains and nobody would be saying no to you."
Timmy McCarthy has identified another difficulty in the unlikely shape of the under-14 féile competition, which, for a young dual player especially, can be an early exposure to pressure. "The drop-out rate in the years after féile is huge. We have this massive event which in Dublin is taken very seriously and then nothing."
"That is possible as well," agrees Pauric McDonald, who has taken Crokes' sides to All-Ireland féile titles in recent years. "In Kilmacud it is a little bit of a monster we created for ourselves having so much success. There is a lot of pressure.
"They are recognising that at board level. There is talk of splitting it up, playing it round-robin over a month or two and taking the emphasis away from that one weekend which has such a massive build up to it. The week after féile in football this year all the Division One games were conceded. The following week it was just too hard to build it and get a team out again."
" I think," says Gerard O'Connor, "there is a case for an under-16 féile, even if was something we ran in Dublin and hosted. The participation figures rise until under-14 and then plummet in the next two years."
Other sports are beginning to eat into territory which Dublin had long taken for granted. There are no figures for seepage to rugby and Pauric Mcdonald feels that GAA's numbers are strong enough regardless, but there is a trickle towards the sport. Timmy McCarthy had high hopes that the young Belvedere centre Ben Woods might be a significant player for Dublin's minors this year. He is off to South Africa on a five-game tour with the Leinster under-18s instead.
"I'm not very familiar with rugby," says Gerard O'Connor, "but look at what they have to offer in terms of professionalism and full-time contracts and travel. It is very attractive if it is put on a plate for them."
"The discipline factor in rugby impresses me," says McCarthy, "and it impresses serious young lads. I was at a schools game over the winter and the outhalf mouthed off to the referee. The schools manager just took him straight off. His best player. He dressed him down on the sideline. Regardless of winning or losing the game he took him off. That says something. Every decision in Gaelic football we question. Every good young player gets a hard time being softened up."
The Dubs battle on tomorrow. These sun-dappled afternoons in Croker flood the imaginations of young players and keep the mini leagues teeming. The journey from beginning to end is difficult though and in Dublin with its vast playing population a dozen years without All-Ireland success and just two titles in the last 30 years is on the face of things a baffling indictment. Those at the coalface know the problems, but respect the system. Part of the trouble is expectation and the pressure it creates.
"I admire the system they have in Nemo," says Timmy McCarthy, "where the club aren't especially interested in winning titles before minor level. They just want to develop players into the Nemo style of football. When you are 18 then you either work in that system or you go your own way.
"Development squads do what it says on the tin," says Pauric McDonald. "We would hope from last year's minors that five or six would come through. You can say then that is the acid test. In the ideal world, yeah, we would just develop players. Egos get in the way. The win at all costs mentality comes in. We need to take steps back and see the big picture. Try to up the player pass-rate. At 18 they should have the skills and groundwork done for them to reach their full potential into adult. That's what counts in the end."
Summer kicks off.
The debate rolls on.
