Dublin were creaking, anyone could see it. There were 53 minutes gone when Andy Moran’s snapshot at the Canal End found the netting behind the crossbar rather than that underneath it. One of Diarmuid Connolly’s few splitseconds of parole from Lee Keegan had come a minute earlier but it was over as soon as it arrived, Donie Vaughan stripping Connolly with a brilliant tackle and turning to set up the move that ended with Moran blazing over.
Mayo were hammering all hammers and though they were a point down, they were coming.
Dublin needed hands on the ball. Time was, Stephen Cluxton would have Connolly running to one wing and Paul Fynn sprinting to the other for the kick-out. But here, it was Brian Fenton with his hand in the air who got Dublin going again. Fenton fed Ciarán Kilkenny, who played a one-two off Flynn before exchanging passes with Davy Byrne (via Cian O'Sullivan) and setting off upfield.
Kilkenny tried to put John Small away on the Mayo 45 but Small was clocked in mid-air by Colm Boyle. Paul Mannion zipped onto the loose ball and cut into the Mayo 20-metre line at pace before the conditions got the better of him and the ball squirted out to Diarmuid O'Connor who was fouled on his own endline by Paddy Andrews.
A&E nurse
It wasn’t the most scintillating passage of play all day by any stretch but short of ending in a score, it was a lot of what Dublin needed right at that moment. With the precision of an A&E nurse, they took the sting out of the game. They went the length of the pitch without a Mayo hand touching the ball.
The most interesting aspect of that sequence though was the identities of the players taking control of the game. The passage of play lasted 54 seconds; Flynn and O’Sullivan were on the ball for a combined two of those seconds and both played short pop-passes backwards. Other than Cluxton’s starter ball, all the forward momentum was the work of Fenton, Kilkenny, Byrne, Small and Mannion – the five youngest Dublin players on the pitch.
Byrne is 22, the other four are all 23. Fenton aside, they all played on the Dublin minor team that lost to Tipperary in the 2011 All-Ireland final. Kilkenny aside, they all played on the under-21 team that made amends three years later. When Jack McCaffrey, who played for both those sides, returns, they will make up the core of the Dublin team for the rest of the decade. That’s the plan anyway.
Yet it is more and more noticeable that the future is now. Small was man of the match in the drawn game, Kilkenny took the crystal in the quarter-final against Donegal. Fenton, memorably, was man of the match in last year’s final and made the shortlist along with Small this time around.
"Yeah, well they both have great capacity for hard work, those performances prove that," said Jim Gavin about Small and Fenton during the week. "They are very diligent, very intentful, they know what they want from the game, very driven. No surprise they have performed consistently well."
Fenton is the 5/4 favourite for footballer of the year, with Kilkenny his closest rival at 4/1. That’s all value judgement stuff, though. A far more visceral measure of their influence is the extent to which the older players in the Dublin side, those with more All-Irelands and fatter legacies to nurse, are looking their way when the need is greatest. As well as being helpful for Dublin’s future, the subtle shift in emphasis is increasingly necessary.
Trotting back
After that initial sequence midway through the second half the last day, Small took an age to peel himself off the floor and was trotting back gingerly as the teams set-up for a Cluxton kick-out after Vaughan spilled a poor wide.
Again, the Dublin keeper didn't go looking for Flynn or Connolly or O'Sullivan. Or Jonny Cooper or Philly McMahon. Instead, he waited for Small to reach his left half-back position and dropped a 50/50 ball down on top of him and Boyle. Small's catch was exceptional and when he came to earth, it was Mannion who was on hand to dig him out.
For the next 10 minutes, it was almost always Small, Fenton, Kilkenny or Byrne who got Dublin moving. Andrews and Bernard Brogan kicked bad wides, McMahon gave a loose handpass on the Mayo 45 that eventually ended with Alan Dillon’s levelling point.
The only time one of Dublin’s younger quintet turned over the ball was when Kilkenny was smothered in tackles and done for over-carrying – but in his defence, he was on the Mayo 20-metre line having started a move behind his own penalty spot and interchanged passes all the way from one side of the pitch to the other. It ended badly but there weren’t many of his elders taking responsibility like that.
After Dillon’s point, it was Kilkenny who Cluxton hit. When Mayo turned over a Mannion pass into Eoghan O’Gara, they launched a promising- looking attack that was only ended by a telescopic strip from Fenton. From that turnover, Dublin eventually worked the ball to Mannion who laid it off to Small for the wing-back to shake-n-bake past Aidan O’Shea and kick the go-ahead point.
It was only Small’s second ever championship score but it showed what a multi-faced bunch they are. At the start of the season, Small was a hold-it-down defender who minded his business with the grim resolve of a liquor store owner in a bad part of town. Somewhere along the line, it was clearly impressed upon him that more was needed.
“John’s a teak-tough defender,” said Jim Gavin on Thursday when we asked about Small’s evolution. “Lots of pace, great skillset and he is a very good decision-maker on the ball, very good game-intelligence. He had played in those central positions, in the half-back line, for his club, Ballymun Kickhams. I would have had him as a 21, would have noticed him a lot.
“If you look back, in his football career even back to the 21s, John was always well able to get forward, always was. If you are asking me was there one particular point in the season, no I let him play his game.”
It would, though, be fair to say that a key part of the Dublin tactical framework is to be attacking consistently from wing-back, yes?
“Sometimes yeah, sometimes.”
Kilkenny has taken an inordinate amount of pundit shade since the Donegal game, a probably inevitable over-correction to the praise he received for his 53 possession that day.
His role for Dublin this summer has undeniably changed from last year – he is now the chief carrier of ball out of defence and starter of attacks. McCaffrey did that job last year and did it with such eye-catching speed that it quickened everyone around him.
At least a part of the reason for Dublin’s lessened goal tally in 2016 can certainly be traced to McCaffrey’s absence. He either scored, had the last pass or was materially involved in nine of their 18 goals in 2015. Kilkenny is a different player and, like most footballers in the country, doesn’t come out particularly shining from the comparison when put in those terms.
Popping up and dishing off
But he is an on-pitch consigliere, even though he’s the second youngest player on the team. He knits and purls the respective lines of the team through each other, popping up and dishing off as he goes. It isn’t sexy but it’s necessary.
In injury-time the last day, when Mayo three times fouled Dublin defenders in an effort to stop them getting out, it was Kilkenny who went in and took responsibility for the restart. And of course, the fourth one he went to take, Connolly wrestled off him. His one major misstep was not taking his point when he broke through the cover on 74 minutes, ending in O’Gara’s scuffed shot.
When the final whistle eventually went on 79 minutes, Kilkenny was the man in possession. He was back on his own 20-metre line, collecting from Cluxton, turning to start Dublin moving again if Conor Lane allowed it. Over the closing 25 minutes of the game, himself, Fenton and Small had managed a poor Dublin performance and very nearly snuck an All-Ireland out of it.
This will be their team in time. It might already be.
