Con happy to lead the way for Dublin
Some counties are still locked in the tradition of naming their captains from the county club champions in the relevant code from that some season, who get to nominate their choice. Other counties prefer to do it in a more objective manner.
Indeed choosing the county captaincy from the club champions has caused plenty of conflict the years. Particularly when that nominated player was unable to nail down a starting place.
Dublin have done things their own way in recent years, goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton retaining the football captaincy throughout most of the All-Ireland winning years of late.
Indeed Dublin only had four football captains in the previous 14 seasons: Bryan Cullen (2011-12), Cluxton (2013-20), Jonny Cooper (2021) and then James McCarthy (2022-24).
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McCarthy’s retirement at the end of last season opened the door for a replacement, and as it turned out Dublin went with Con O’Callaghan from current county and All-Ireland club football champions Cuala. Ciarán Kilkenny was named vice-captain.
O’Callaghan had been vice-captain under McCarthy, and the 29-year-old is clearly stepping up to his new role with some relish. He was by far Dublin’s best player against Wicklow in Sunday’s Leinster football quarter-final, scoring 1-7 – including a two-pointer, and a penalty deftly finished on the rebound.
Also named AIB Club Footballer of the Year, O’Callaghan is in the form of his life, and if Dublin are to win back the All-Ireland this year, they’ll certainly need him to keep firing on all cylinders.
Dessie Farrell didn’t have too many positive things to say after Dublin eventually got past Wicklow by nine points, but heaping praise on O’Callaghan was one of them.
“I’m sure there will be aspects of his own performance he won’t be happy with but definitely he always tries very hard,” said Farrell. “It’s never a lack of effort and he has shown leadership throughout, when maybe some other fellas weren’t really stepping up to the mark for ourselves.” — Ian O’Riordan
Looney, Coppinger and Healy are rare jewels in dual world
On the male side of the house, intercounty dual players have been extinct for years. Even at elite club level, their existence is under threat in many places, harassed by rat-a-tat-tat club schedules in the autumn. In camogie and ladies football, though, the plates are still spinning.
On Saturday Hannah Looney, Libby Coppinger and Aoife Healy lined out for Cork in Croke Park against Galway in the Division 2 football league final, and a day later, played for Cork in the camogie league final in Thurles, also against Galway.
“I know I changed it up a bit today but there are some brilliant players there,” said Ger Manley, manager of the Cork camogie team. “The example is the three girls that played the football League final in Croke Park yesterday - Libby Coppinger, Hannah Looney and Aoife Healy and how good they were. And I’m not going to stop them playing.”
Healy played the full game on Saturday and 57 minutes on Sunday; Coppinger was replaced 12 minutes into the second half of the football final but started and finished the camogie final; Looney was taken off two minutes from the end of the football final and lasted 51 minutes on Sunday.
By any metric it is an extraordinary feat of endurance and bald-headed determination. In recent years they have been dogged by fixture clashes, with games in both codes lined up for the same day, occasionally at the same time. As far back as 2020 Coppinger said that they weren’t asking for games to be played on different weekends, just different days on the same weekend. So far this year, that has happened twice, without any direct clashes.
For how long more can they keep it going? Orlaith Cahalane was on both panels last year but this season she opted just to play camogie. When the amalgamation of the three Gaelic games associations finally happens will the fixtures calendar be any more sympathetic to dual players? No. Playing games on successive days will be as good as it gets. Is that sustainable?
Coppinger, Healy and Looney are probably among the last players to try. — Denis Walsh
Home comforts can soothe the soul
By coincidence, Saturday featured the two championship venues to have generated greatest controversy in recent times. The now Cedral St Conleth’s Park was seven years ago the trigger for the most famous dispute over where a match should be played.
The ‘Newbridge or Nowhere’ slogan became a template for all such future disagreements. In 2022, an equally controversial if less euphonious ‘Páirc Uí Rinn or Nowhere’ broke out before Kerry travelled to Cork.
‘Corrigan or Nowhere’ was the latest to erupt when Ulster GAA fixed the provincial first round Antrim-Armagh for Newry instead of Antrim’s temporary home in Corrigan Park.
Administrative minds were changed in all cases and the matches went ahead with home advantage. Kildare beat Mayo seven years ago; Kerry duly beat Cork and Armagh beat Antrim on Saturday.
Also, on Saturday in the now rebuilt Newbridge, Kildare had their first home fixture in Leinster for 30 years – coincidentally the last time the provincial semi-finals were both played outside Croke Park.
The fascination with the redeveloped Croke Park has long abated. Back in the 2008 Leinster semi-finals, Westmeath ran Dublin to two points before a crowd of 67,075 and a year later an attendance of 51,458 was described as “disappointing” in a match report when the counties met again.
These days, it’s hard to get the GAA to cough up the precise attendances at Dublin matches in Croke Park so negligible have they become.
In the rush to ensure that anyone can get a ticket for most fixtures, the GAA lost sight of the very parochialism that underpins the games. Home venues generate atmosphere and hopes for the locals when an elite team arrives in town.
Provincial hurling has discovered how using home advantage can level the playing field for counties after years of throwing fixtures into Thurles or Croke Park.
Sunday saw the oddest example of the lot. It was Dublin’s 14th championship meeting with Wicklow and only the second since 1990 but the first to be played in Aughrim.
Twenty-four years ago, in the first year of the All-Ireland qualifiers, the road to rehabilitation for the eventual champions, John O’Mahony’s Galway, began in Wicklow – which means that up until Sunday, Wicklow had played more championship matches in Aughrim against Galway than against Dublin, their neighbours in the province for well over a century. — Seán Moran
Big dreams remain for the Wee County
When Louth beat Westmeath in a 2010 Leinster semi-final, it ended one of the longest provincial final appearance droughts in the country – that victory sent the Wee County to the decider for the first time in 50 years.
So, it says much about Louth’s development and consistency over recent seasons that they now stand on the verge of reaching a third successive Leinster SFC final. It is a feat Louth only achieved once before in history, between 1912 and 1914. They beat Dublin in the 1912 final but lost to Wexford in both 1913 and 1914.
Dublin have been their nemesis over the last two years in the decider but the fact Louth are now just one victory away from doing something the county hasn’t managed in over 100 years is quite something.
And it’s all set against the backdrop of how this whole Louth project was meant to collapse after Mickey Harte’s departure in September 2023. But here they are, on the doorstep of history.
Kildare stand in their way of progressing to that third provincial final on the bounce, but after showing resilience and character to overcome Laois on Sunday, Ger Brennan will hope his Louth side have hit form at the right time of the season. They finished their league off with a win over Meath and now have got their championship campaign off to a winning start over Laois. — Gordon Manning
Have team announcements become a dated concept?
Some of us have been around this game long enough to remember the ritual of chasing up championship team news. It typically started on a Tuesday, continued through Wednesday, and reached its peak on the Thursday evening, when county PROs were hounded until surrendering at least some piece of information.
It didn’t matter the names we did or didn’t get rarely reflected the team which started that weekend, it was seen as vital information nonetheless, and a sort of badge of honour if you managed to source one particular team when no one else did.
Things have changed in recent years, that ritual of chasing up championship team news replaced by the GAA’s own requirement since 2023 for counties to submit 26-man matchday panels by 9pm on the Thursday before a game, which is then released to the public around lunchtime on the Friday.
The intention was to put all teams on an equal footing and level of transparency, given some counties, Dublin in particular, were known to release “dummy” teams, or else make no team announcement at all. Under the new requirement, managers could still make two changes, if originally listed players had to cry off on certain permitted grounds.
Teams who broke this requirement could be liable to forfeit the game. However Dublin football manager Dessie Farrell believes this practice is no longer fit for purpose, given the ever-increasing intensity of championship fixtures.
Speaking after his team eventually got past Wicklow in Aughrim on Sunday, Farrell highlighted the fact he only named a panel of 24, unsure if goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton and defender Cian Murphy would make it for Sunday; as it transpired neither player did.
“It’s one of the challenges trying to put an early panel in for registration,” said Farrell. “It’s inevitable that there’s going to be changes. We registered a panel of 24 for today’s game instead of 26 because of a situation where the maximum you’re allowed to replace is two players.
“I think that’s a legacy issue, and probably something that needs to be looked at in terms of where the game has got to now, and a lot of these games having to finish on the day, and when you factor in extra-time in a situation like that.
“That regulation probably isn’t fit for purpose anymore. So it’s something we brought up with the county board and have asked them to bring up with the appropriate authorities as well.”
Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney spoke of similar issues after his team got past Antrim in their Ulster quarter-final, that game played at 12.30 on the Saturday.
It appears the GAA may need to be more flexible on this requirement, or would that only re-open the door to more traditional “GAA team news”? — Ian O’Riordan
