Life moves on. Every footballer finds out eventually that Father Time is the only man who never has to take his beating.
Dublin are out of the championship and a few of them will decide over the winter that it’s time to do something else. But most intercounty footballers retire without anybody even noticing. So I wouldn’t be crying a river for the Dubs.
You’re talking about some of the greats of the game. I don’t know who will go and who will stay but I do know that the likes of James McCarthy and Stephen Cluxton don’t need any more sweet words from the likes of me. They don’t need them from anyone. The game is fairly ruthless – when it tells you it’s over, it doesn’t mince words.
Given all they’ve won, there’s no need for people to be getting out the handkerchiefs for the end of an era. Some of the talk since Saturday night would remind you of being at a funeral for some old stager and fellas are going around saying, “Ah, ‘tis awful sad”. Meanwhile you’re thinking, “Sad? Sure he lived till he was 90 and he was in Vegas last month!”
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The Dubs will be fine. Realistically, how far are they going to fall? Are they going to start losing Leinster finals? Not a chance. Even if a heap of them retire over the winter, can you see any scenario that doesn’t have Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-final next year? Unlikely. They will still be favourites for most of the games they’re involved in.
[ Seán Moran: Light finally goes out on Dublin’s remarkable eraOpens in new window ]
I do think there is some merit to the idea that they could fall out of All-Ireland contention for a spell. When match-winners retire, the supporting cast has to step up. But when those match-winners have been around for a decade or more, suddenly you’re asking the supporting cast to change who they were in the group for most of their career.
It’s a different dynamic. Some people are better suited to being subs. They thrive in short, sharp bursts, coming off the bench to do a job for 15 or 20 minutes when the game has loosened out. If you’ve done that for five or six years on the Dublin panel and you’re used to arriving into games where you’re six points up and the other crowd have their tongues hanging out, this is a new world.
Some of these players are going to find themselves looking around and wondering where everybody went. If you’re a young fella who has grown up helping his father move the cattle from one field to the next, it’s very easy to think you know everything about moving cattle. But then there comes a day when the father is sick and he sends you out to do it yourself and all of a sudden, you’ve 25 cattle running everywhere on you. It can be scary when it’s all up to you.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes Dublin a year or two to get themselves back to the pinnacle again. But nervous Dubs need have no fear – it will happen. Someone always comes along in Dublin. When the taxman dies inside in the tax office in Tralee, the rest of us still have to pay our taxes eventually.
For this year though, Sam Maguire will be going somewhere else. The Kerry team stayed above in Dunboyne on Saturday night and I can just picture the scene after Galway knocked Dublin out. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they changed tack as soon as the game was over. Whatever their game plan was going to be against Derry, I’d imagine they changed it and said, “Right lads, we’re parking the bus tomorrow”.
The Dubs going out means everybody in the championship is thinking the same thing: “We can actually win this now. Let’s not do anything stupid”. You could see it in any of the interviews the Kerry players or management did after the game. They went big on discipline and made sure not to give Derry any opening. That tells you what they emphasised going into the game.
Have you ever seen David Clifford play so conservatively? He spent so much of the game out around the 45. I heard people saying that Kerry should have been kicking long ball into him, especially after he took that brilliant mark in the first half. But for long spells of the game, he wasn’t there to available for kicked deliveries.
[ Jack O’Connor makes no apologies for Kerry’s eyesore win over DerryOpens in new window ]
A lot of the time, Clifford was out around the 45 trying to get on the ball. At certain points, it was actually Jason Foley who was the closest Kerry player to the Derry goal. If anyone was wondering why Shane McGuigan was the player who dived full-length to get that block in to stop a Kerry goal in the first half, there’s your answer.
Kerry got the job done. They got up and got home and didn’t lose anybody along the road. They know that once Dublin are gone, there’s no exceptional team left. Everybody else is decent but nothing to be scared of. They acted accordingly. They kept Derry where they could see them, made sure they didn’t give up a goal and squeezed them in the last 10 minutes.
Ultimately, I’m not sure there’s a whole pile between the teams that are left. Galway showed they are a proper team on Saturday night. I know they’re hanging in there with the injuries but they have plenty of quality.
A 50 per cent Seán Kelly is still as good as the bulk of what’s on offer elsewhere. Damien Comer and Shane Walsh are exceptional, Paul Conroy shows huge leadership. If they can keep them all on the pitch for as long as possible, there’s no reason they can’t do it.
But all four teams will be thinking that way after the weekend. That’s the effect of the Dubs leaving the stage.
