Plucky Dubs can rise again
Daly's young team can build on noble defeat to phenomenal Cats and use final experience to propel them to next level
Main pic: Dublin's David O'Callaghan, in action against Kilkenny players, from left, John Tennyson, Michael Kavanagh and John Dalton.
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Dublin didn't exactly swim free of Alcatraz here, but they did sustain the possibility of escape right up to lock-down. That was as near a miracle as Croker could muster then. Anthony Daly's life work has been to take a match to the notion that hurling is some kind of solemn High Mass celebrated by a narrow church.
He is drawn to the Kilkennys of this world in the way a natural hunter gets drawn to the woods. Daly isn't offended by defeat, but he comes out in hives at the tiniest flicker of subservience.
So he set up Dublin in his own image yesterday. He's the kind of man you'd choose to be next to in a fox-hole and that's the strength of personality that rippled through his team. Dublin took Kilkenny's space and invited them to retrieve it if they could.
It made for a better Leinster final than the doomsayers could have imagined.
Did they ever seriously discommode the champions? Brian Cody thought so. Asked if Kilkenny could have called on another gear if necessary, Cody responded: "I would say all the gears we had we were looking for them out there today. We could only find what we found. If there is another one there, I hope it arrives the next day."
conundrum
The conundrum with playing them is that you can drop an extra defender deep (as Dublin did with John McCaffrey) on survival setting, but it leaves you threadbare in attack. At times in the first half, Dublin's hurling was a panoply of fidgety flicks and jabs designed to keep the sliotar out of Kilkenny hands. They almost forgot to hurl.
Yet, Kilkenny couldn't shake them. The firing squad kept stepping outside for a cigarette.
In the end, the combined scoring total from play of Henry Shefflin, Eoin Larkin, Eddie Brennan, Richie Power and Aidan Fogarty would be 0-4. Heaven help us, they looked human. This was partly down to intelligent Dublin defending, partly down to a strange lethargy in feline movement.
But for Martin Comerford arriving like someone slipping through a sky-light to goal with the outside of his right boot in the 16th minute, then slipping behind Joey Boland to spoon a sublime second after Michael Rice's run in the 55th minute, who is to say what uprising we might be rhapsodising this morning?
Instead, Kilkenny did what they always do. They held their nerve to eventually cut free of the little traffic jam that is Leinster now. Just as they did against Tipp in the league final and against Galway two weeks ago in Tullamore, they found within only what they needed to find.
"I felt we had a great chance and probably didn't drive it home," said Daly afterwards. "They weren't putting us away. We could sense that after half-time and we drove on. Then that slobbery second goal really murdered us.
"I'm proud of the way every man stuck to his task. We asked everyone to really front up and be a man about it. And they did, every last one of them. But make mistakes against this crowd and you'll be punished."
Dublin, he reckoned, would be the better for this. The best education is practical and, for all the organic growth at underage level in the city, nothing matures young hurlers quicker than exposure to molten combat. David Treacy and Alan McCrabbe were wonderful yesterday but, as a unit, the depleted attack was always caught in traffic.
"Look, we've seen them (Kilkenny) in the last two All-Ireland finals, they had them over in nearly 10 minutes," reflected Daly. "So you'd be so conscious of that. Playing Johnny (McCaffrey) back gives the rest of the backs that little bit of freedom to attack it.
"I'm just disappointed because I felt there was a massive chance there to win a Leinster title and they don't come around every day. I mean, the draw next year could be Kilkenny in the quarter-finals, Galway in the semis, Wexford in the final.
"Kilkenny just seem to come up with a goal, even when they're under pressure. We saw them do it against Galway. That's from experience, from playing together and being very confident in the fellas around you. Someone seems to do the business for them every day.
"You have to play in big days and our lads haven't been. Playing Division 1 league games was a help. And these lads will play in more Leinster finals because our age profile is great. The key is you must learn from it. But playing in it will teach you that. The next time you get into it you can't let it pass you by and we had a little period in the first half where we let that happen.
"Look, that's human nature. They're only young lads. Some fellas were more nervous than others. That's natural. But we're in the All-Ireland quarter-final and we have to get our heads around that, rapid."
Team captain Stephen Hiney was mildly affronted by the notion that this Leinster final might have equated to a trip to the gas chamber.
"We didn't come just to fulfil a fixture," said the Ballyboden man. "We really thought we had a big chance. Maybe we showed our naivety today, banging a few high balls into open space where they had an extra man. They weren't doing that. But that's possibly down to it being our first Leinster final in so long."
For Cody, the garlands were always going to be flimsy for the closure of business they were considered 1/25 favourites to complete. Yet, the summer is unravelling to his liking too. This is his space, his library almost. Two more wins from immortality.
"It was a great game I'd say, every bit of what I expected it to be," he said. "I've been talking the whole time about the quality of Dublin. They showed it in the league, they showed it against Wexford and they showed it again today.
"If we had been less than committed, we wouldn't be Leinster champions now. That's for sure."
Onward and upwards for the champions then. But sunshine, too, on the face of Dublin.
- Vincent Hogan
