ON GAELIC GAMES:It took the footballers' epochal triumph to overshadow the strides made by Anthony Daly's Dublin hurlers in beating Kilkenny for a first league title in 72 years, writes SEAN MORAN

YEAR’S END. Time to bring the boat into dry dock for a while, time to clean the tools and wrap them in oily rags for the new year – or whatever other tendentious allusions to actual hard work you prefer.

It has been Dublin’s year. The county would probably have settled for winning the football All-Ireland after a period of 16 years (the second longest interval the county has had to endure between successes) but there was so much more to remember.

It was ironic that just as the Dublin-Kerry hype machine began to show signs of strain – with Dublin beginning to protest that it really wasn’t that satisfactory a rivalry given that they never seemed to win – along comes the capital’s once-in-a-generation win in an All-Ireland final and under circumstances so dramatic the images will last forever.

It took this epochal triumph to overshadow the strides made by Anthony Daly’s hurlers in beating Kilkenny for a first league title in 72 years, an extraordinary breakthrough.

At last an All-Ireland semi-final was reached and the team, though short so many first choices because of injury, was spiky and competitive against defending champions Tipperary. If there are problems, they are that the benchmarks set are serious and will be hard to better and the rule of developmental progress is if you’re not going forward you’re going backwards.

There was also the mounting evidence that the county’s under-age investment is beginning to yield results with teams in both minor finals and the under-21 hurlers reaching their second All-Ireland in five years. That all three ended in disappointment was sad for those who won’t go on to feature prominently at senior level but if the theory that the best senior player is someone who has lost a minor final, the county will benefit.

Similarly the 2007 All-Ireland under-21 finalists produced a greater crop of seniors than the Galway side that defeated them and if that is the outcome of this year’s campaign, it too will have been worthwhile.

Almost as significant was the activity off the field. Twelve months ago when what came to be known as the “Spring Series” was taking shape, the major reservation was that taking Croke Park for home league fixtures was all very well if Dublin were winning.

If, however, the team was going badly, public enthusiasm would be harder to rouse and it might take the assistance of the reformed Beatles rather than Jedward to bring the crowds down Jones’s Road.

As it turned out, the county enjoyed its best league since previously winning the competition in 1993, going unbeaten in their Division One matches and losing by a point in the final to Cork despite being short four of the attack that would line out in the All-Ireland final. It was the first time in 10 years that a county had lost the league final and gone on to win the All-Ireland.

The on-field requirements taken care of, it was a matter of promotion and letting the more atmospheric effect of floodlights, double-bills with the hurlers and the musical support attract the committed and the curious. The outcome was a series of crowds averaging 30,000 – not enormous in the context of Croke Park (making the argument for the GAA’s need for a 40,000-50,000-capacity stadium in the city) but massive by league standards.

The venture demonstrated at once the potential of Gaelic games to harness a consistent mass market, especially in Dublin, and the considerable obstacles to any form of systematic marketing and promotion when the fixtures’ lists are so restricted in the league and unpredictable in championship.

At the end of the year the county’s strategic plan was launched. Like any other blueprint its impact awaits successful delivery but it was full of ambitious targets and appropriate for a county currently high on self-confidence.

If portents are anything to go by, the county’s good times mightn’t be finished yet either. Although in the past seven decades only one county has won back-to-back football All-Irelands in years ending -1 and -2 – Offaly in the 1970s – the feat has been accomplished five times over the 12 decades of the All-Ireland championship.

Dublin account for three of those, 1891-92, 1901-02 and 1921-22. Interestingly none of the finals were played in those years. In keeping with the chaotic nature of GAA fixtures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the first two titles were won at least one year late and the third sequence was disrupted by the political turbulence of the era.

On the subject of political turbulence, the country swapped one corner forward from Offaly for another from Mayo as Taoiseach – a brave move considering the Connacht county’s difficulty in fashioning national breakthroughs although one of his colleagues is the redoubtable Jimmy Deenihan, now Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht whose background and exploits in Kerry’s serial successes of a previous generation have been set down in My Sporting Life, launched this week.

Affairs of state and the GAA became entangled during the year when the Queen of England included Croke Park on the itinerary of her state visit. The idea has been credited to now former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, whose stock and that of her husband, Dermot, is sufficiently high that there was little overt opposition to the idea.

As former association president Peter Quinn rightly observed at the time the recognition of the GAA’s role in Irish society probably wasn’t as earth-shattering a gesture as the visit to the Garden of Remembrance. But it still made for an historic afternoon. smoran@irishtimes.com