Very obviously, it would be wrong to draw too many definite conclusions from Dublin’s defeat at Armagh’s hands on Saturday night. Wrong, silly and maybe even a little petty, if truth be told. So let’s settle in this January morning and do just that.
Perspective is important, clearly. Whereas most teams have ceilings, Dublin have a floor. The numbers, money, institutional memory – it all combines to ensure they can't fall too far. They won't be relegated, they'll still win Leinster. Their worst-case scenario is still a different world to the one pretty much in which every county lives. We'll cry them very few rivers.
Still, there's no point pretending this is anything other than a crisis for Dessie Farrell. They may well come through it, certainly. They have the reserves of firepower, character and knowledge needed to flip the script. But here and now, with 10 weekends to go until the 2022 championship throws in, nobody can argue that they're in a good place. Wherever and however the year finishes, this is no spot from which to be starting.
The really striking thing on Saturday night was how all the energy and innovation flowed from the players in orange jerseys. Rian O'Neill was probably the right choice for man of the match in the end, but there wasn't a player who enjoyed himself more than Rory Grugan. His evening was full of bravura plays on the ball – back-garden flicks to himself, raking passes into O'Neill, a couple of fire-fighting rebounds gathered up in his own box.
In their pomp, it was the Dublin players who did all that. Think of Con O'Callaghan 80 seconds into his first All-Ireland final skating around one of the all-time great Mayo defenders in Colm Boyle and flicking an outside-of-the-boot finish to the net. Think of Eoin Murchán sprinting on to a throw-in and whizzing 50 yards to finish his first senior goal as if he was playing against under-12s. Think of Paul Mannion, Ciarán Kilkenny, Brian Fenton, Jack McCaffrey, James McCarthy – all fast-twitch fibres and irresistible power plays.
It is noticeable too that Dublin make far more unforced errors these days
Whatever Farrell’s Dublin are these days, they’re not that. On Saturday night, all the thrust came from players like Jarly Óg Burns and Aidan Forker, bursting out of defence like they couldn’t wait to break bad news to the lads on Hill 16. It came from Jemar Hall, all hip-swing and shimmy around the middle. It came from Jason Duffy and Stefan Campbell, taking on bold finishes with the sort of smooth confidence that Dublin forwards more or less had trademarked for half a decade.
It is noticeable too that Dublin make far more unforced errors these days than was ever the case when they were kings. In 2019, it took until injury time at the end of the drawn All-Ireland final for a Dublin player to have a go at a shot from outside the opposition 45. Diarmuid Connolly tried to bring the house down with the sort of booming effort that they had been disciplined enough not to attempt even once all season. He missed.
On Saturday night, Dean Rock tried two in the space of a few minutes and dropped them both short. Granted, they were frees. And granted, he is Dean Rock. If anyone is entitled to have a swing at those kind of low-percentage shots, he is. But they were dumb choices. Dublin players never used to make dumb choices. Or if they did, they didn’t get to make them for long.
So where has it all gone wrong? Well, maybe that’s the place to start. Maybe we don’t need much more than Occam’s Razor here. Dublin aren’t as good as they used to be because they don’t have the depth of talent they used have. Ryan Basquel was the first-choice corner forward on Saturday, given his chance to stake his claim. Basquel is 29 and there remains a nagging suspicion that if he was going to be a top intercounty forward, he would have shown it by now.
In times past, Rock would have had to fret over the consequences of those two bad misses. He would have had to interrogate his choices and buck up his ideas. But he knows, as does Farrell, that it’s going to take an injury or drastic loss of form for him not to start come championship. Basquel and the other inside forward contenders know that also. So maybe it’s nothing more complicated than this Dublin set-up having less to work with than in Jim Gavin’s time.
That feels like a cop-out though. Anyone who has watched Dublin closely since the start of last year’s Leinster campaign knows this is far more than a personnel issue. Armagh people would laugh heartily at the idea that Dublin football has run short of talented players. A Border county with 44 senior clubs, half of which are scraped up from little more than glorified townlands, they could still put out a team that oozed swagger, intent and cohesion on Saturday.
Every season brought something new because it had to
A much deeper problem for Dublin is the fact that they look to have stood still while everyone else has been searching for a way to beat them. Go back through their glory years and the thing that set them apart was their level of innovation. Whether it was Stephen Cluxton changing the kick-out game or the touchline-hugging width or basketball-style screen setting in their forwards. Every season brought something new because it had to.
Whereas now, everyone can see that they have stagnated. Their signature move is still to hold on to the ball until they can create an overload or isolate a defender and dish off a pass in a shooting position. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But it would be a terrible indictment of football in general if what won them an All-Ireland in 2020 could secure them one in 2022.
The game keeps moving. On Saturday night, Armagh were the ones with chalk on their boots from hugging the touchline. Armagh were the taking out the cover with pinpoint kick passes. Armagh were the ones doing the crowding out in defence and streaking forward to flash points on the break. Most of all, they were the ones who looked like they relished every minute of it.
It’s still January. If we’re talking dumb choices, the dumbest of all would be to pronounce that any of this means Dublin are done for the year. But this is starting to look like a feature rather than a bug. If a visit to Tralee on Saturday doesn’t bring out a bit of life in them, it’s hard to imagine what will.
