Dublin GAA

We wanted all the Gaelic football team there, you know.

You know, Dublin poker wearing their Dublin GAA jerseys, you know.

The Irish dancing school, Scanlon School of Irish Dancing, Kids School of Irish Dancing.

The pipe bands, you know, was there.

And there are people of great conscience in Ireland, for example, David Hickey, uh, who remains for me the greatest living Irishman, who...

And, and I see the Dublin County Board have voted to, um, back the boycott of Alliance, et cetera, et cetera.

Just, well, the Dublin clubs have in an overwhelming vote just this week.

But on Monday of this week, the Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, right? And it was, it was very like the old days in the North, you know, where the, a loyalist mob would be accompanied by the B Specials and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, you know? But they stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem, accompanied by settlers and armed police.

Galway were ready.

Dublin had made a lot of headway.

And the one clubs.

I keep going back to the one clubs.

You'll get away and play against...

Someone ever told me that I was going to be playing against Paul Brogan against Dublin.

I would have laughed at them 5, 10, 15 years ago.

Same with Kevin McManam.

You never have an opportunity to play against lads like that unless you're at the elite level of football.

So...

It's definitely an eye-opener and if anybody's out there is curious about it, the All-Ireland Masters final is being played on the 12th against Dublin and Donegal and there's a Division 3 final as well on the same day.

If you're curious about the level of fitness and everything for it, it's definitely well worth checking out them two games.

And I think a lot of the, the buildup and the kind of anticipation, again, you're kind of thinking you'd be tipping Kerry and kind of going everything was with it.

If, if they can kick on to the next year and get that bit fitter, but I suppose there's only two weeks between games so it wasn't the whole pile the boys were doing to get fitter and get sharper there wasn't much there and they were just about getting by and like we mentioned the Armagh game I think 30 points they scored in that day and 31 against Tyrone in the quarter final only 24 against Dublin and the lowest score of the year then against Mayo at 20 in total yeah like there's just a lack of energy with the team this year I do think it's down to something as simple as they didn't have players on the field for long enough to I think too many big players missed too many big chunks of football and they got them back on the field, but they were never going to get them up to speed.

Just the fact is that they can't train.

I spent a bit of time with Ciarán McGeaney at the final.

Yeah, I actually think Kerry's style of play when they got to Croke Park wasn't by design.

I think it was built out of necessity and I don't think they could play the higher octane game of kicking and making long runs because I just don't think they had the legs or the energy or the zip in their play.

And I think when you look back and then you look at the Tyrone game, the Dublin game, Boredom team is probably looking at now going, we should have gone after Kerry more.

Kerry were allowed to dictate the pace, the slow choreographed attacks in them games.

I think the elephant in the room is that Crowe Park wasn't one of them because it just wasn't really something that was an option.

You're a big Dublin GA fan as well.

You would have been in and out of Crowe Park regularly.

I mean, I imagine up until now as well and going forward you will too.

But there seems to be an increasing amount kind of following in that path.

But would you see a Kerry footballer or a Dublin footballer, you know what I mean? That's what I'm wondering.

Or is there too much of a

crossover?

The

more I think about that now, that was my... like I had just come back in from I'd spent the whole I got surgery the year before in like August and then I'd basically just done the rehab get back in so didn't get a massive amount of off-season sort of running that done so probably just building up at a couple of games under my belt and like that was my biggest sort of test since then and obviously took it out of me but yeah I remember like I was cooked after that for a good 10 days maybe even two weeks like before we were back in playing a club game on the Wednesday night or whatever but the yeah took it out of me but then you know as we went through this season got a good off season came back in this year felt like the body was at a better level to be able to push on and it probably was that game of like right here's the level here's the standard that you can be at and suppose when like when you go up the divisions you look at the speed of the games played you look at the quality the intensity of it week on week and you know the division two division one teams are playing then like that's that's their baseline that's what they're used to and then championship that can ramp it up again so yeah like we were well aware that it was going to be a step up and then it was up to us to be like how do we consistently hit those heights and it's probably been our problem the last couple of years it's that we can be we can hit those heights in glimpses but then we're like we could be as you saw in the second half like I probably sums it up that we dropped off but then even this year there's been some years or some games where we've been brutal we've been well off it or another game's been flying even the Wicklow game flying first half flying for 50 minutes maybe and then the wheels come off like but Yeah, it's just that sustained output in those levels.

Again, you look at the likes of Armagh, Carré, Dublin, those sort of teams, the standards that have been renowned to hold those high standards for so long.

But when you start chasing that, when you start looking at it at the start of a year or the start of a championship and saying... you know that's where we need to be and this is where we are or aren't how do you see it that you actually ever get there in terms of is it physical is it mental is it you know where are the big gaps

Um, some context, I mean, Pat Gilroy is a GAA blue blood.

He's won an All-Ireland as a player and manager with Dublin.

He's managed Dublin footballers and hurlers.

Um, but his achievements outside of GAA are as significant.

Uh, he was a MD or CEO of a company, Dalkia, employing hundreds of people while still in his 30s.

Really, hurling is dying in front of our eyes.

We're probably down to a three-team competition." Um, and he makes other, he goes on and on, and there's so many strong points.

He even talks about the inevitability of Dublin with the changing demographics and two million people potentially living in the Dublin environment, of having to break up away from the county system, which-

And, you know, catering for corporate had started from the day we opened, but it kind of developed into something more.

But that whole sports side was not something that I kind of felt, oh, we're, we're gonna, we were gonna specialize in sports, but we have as a result of that phone call, and that got us the Dublin GAA gig many, many years ago.

Um, and we're still so proudly working with Dublin GAA all those years since.

And-

That's quite amazing 'cause it's, it's great exposure then for y- which probably, I'm, I'm wondering by osmosis, did that en- make it easier for you to move into other parts of Dublin and other places to ...

So there were, there were two guys, Jock O'Connor and, um, Declan O'Carroll.

Declan played with Donegal and Jock played with Dublin.

So they were sick, sick of seeing him soar into the sky.

So he came down on one situation with the ball in his hand, and he landed, and next thing, the two of them come in and squashed him, one from each side.

And by the time we got into, um, Arthur's Quay and around that area, you know, down by the, down by the, the li- the library, and it was, the cars were four abreast on the road behind us.

Yeah.

Nobody could go to Dublin.

You just couldn't go.