Niall Scully would’ve been more than happy to park Dublin‘s Leinster semi-final loss to Meath. Write it off and drive on to the next challenge.
But he couldn’t. He woke up on Monday morning carrying the weight of that disappointment and opened the laptop to revisit it all over again.
There was no pen and paper on hand for the first viewing as the five-time All-Ireland winner scrutinised his own performance. On the second watch, he looked to delve a little deeper.
The Dubs gathered together for the first time since Portlaoise on Tuesday evening. It won’t be until the weekend that the collective review of their first provincial loss since 2010 is complete and all the lessons are fully absorbed.
“You can’t just go on blindly and hope that you figure it out. I’ve watched the game a couple of times. We’ll bring all our heads together later on,” said Scully.
“Once the weekend comes, if we have answers, we can move on and look forward to the next step.”
What the result hasn’t done is shake his belief in their group. When asked if he is still convinced Dublin can win the All-Ireland, Scully’s response is instant: “Absolutely.”
The rationale reflects back to how they handled relegation from Division One heading into the 2023 campaign.
“We have dealt with blows previously. We’ve been relegated to Division Two and won an All-Ireland from Division Two.
“We’ll treat this no differently than we would have treated that. We need to regroup and figure out what happened on the weekend and adjust to that accordingly.
“We are good enough to be in the mix. If you get it right, we have a three- or four-week period to do that. Hopefully, come the business end of the season, we will be there or thereabouts.”
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Speaking less than an hour before the All-Ireland group stage draw took place, Scully was aware of the potential ‘group of death’ scenarios.
That came to pass with their schedule bringing them away to the Connacht champions (Galway or Mayo) before hosting the Ulster runners-up (Armagh or Donegal) and finishing with a clash against Derry at a neutral venue.
“You have to play the best at some stage throughout the season,” he said. “That’s an exciting prospect. A provincial winner at home in their venue is quite exciting.”
There are a couple of factors cited for the Meath defeat that Scully rejects.
Injuries? “We had the squad to win that game,” he replies. Playing outside Croke Park? “I don’t see that as something that we buy into, no. It’s something that we look forward to.”
He also won’t be tuning into the social media postmortem.
“We’re going to regroup. We won’t be focusing on what everybody else is going to say about us. Everybody will have their opinions but what matters most is what we’re discussing with ourselves.”
So what were Scully’s thoughts as he watched it all unfold again on Monday morning?
“Meath were always a big, physical group, so I definitely felt that at the weekend. They targeted our kick-outs and got a good bit of joy out of it. If you’re not winning your kick-outs, you have less of the ball and less plays for us to attack.
“You’d a huge wind and us kicking against the wind and a press coming on . . . We just couldn’t figure out how to get our hands on the ball.”
The new rules are a major factor there.
“The kick-outs are a lot more crucial [compared] to what they would have been previously. Where it would have been a broader tactic of what you could do on the opposition’s kick-out, now it’s okay, he can only kick it 60 metres but he has to kick it 40 anyway.
“You can’t have any complaints from the performances of both sides on the day. Meath are a good side. We won the Sam Maguire from Division Two and they just missed out on promotion to Division One this year. They came with a game plan and they executed it.
“Down the last 10 minutes, we’d a lot of unforced turnovers and our execution was off. Against Kerry down there, all them opportunities came off and the execution was correct. It’s a fine balance between the two.”
– Niall Scully was speaking at SuperValu’s sponsorship renewal of the All-Ireland Football Championship for another five years.
