The thing about insults, they're in the eye of the beholder. When Wexford county chairman Diarmuid Devereaux had a pop at The Sunday Game this week, he singled out for attention Ger Loughnane's choice description of the draw with Dublin a few weeks back as being "constipated hurling". "Surely," Devereaux told the Irish Examiner, "it's reasonable to expect a teacher can find a better adjective than words of that nature."

As it happens, Anthony Daly respectfully disagrees. He didn't see his erstwhile manager in action – being on the line at the time – but he heard about it afterwards. And when he thought about it, he couldn't think of a better way to nutshell the issues that had been holding his Dublin team back.

“I got a couple of texts alright saying that Loughnane had said we looked constipated. And you know what? It’s definitely one of the more apt things that were said. I thought about it afterwards and it was all I’ve been preaching for a while. Let it flow! Let it out to f**k, lads!

“I heard that some people had a problem with him for saying it . . . But in actual fact, he was right, like. We had to let it out of ourselves, if you’ll pardon the pun. You have to get into a flow. And in some ways now with the games coming week after week, it’s a great way to be. The players don’t have too much time to think of it. They just have to keep it going now but they’re enjoying it.”

Fifth summer
Daly's fifth summer with Dublin has been distilled down to its purest drop now. Tonight's replay with Kilkenny will be their fourth match in four weeks. Whatever happens, they'll have their fifth in five next week.

Lose and they meet Tipperary in a loser-go-home qualifier, win and they play Galway in the Leinster final. They’ve grabbed the dice at the big money tables now, something he’s been waiting on them to do for two full years at this stage.

“We needed to go and hurl with a bit more freedom. Some of the mistakes we were making, definitely that first night in Wexford – they were down to fellas reacting to pressure. I can’t put those down to anything in training. Because you watch their touch in training and it’s spot on and it’s all done at a fast pace. But just that bit of pressure when we’re looking for a performance from them. That’s all I can put it down to.

“But we have been throwing that pressure off as we go. Certainly in that second half the other night, we played with real freedom. That’s what we want to do and look, when we play like that we can play at our best. And that’s all we want.

“If we play at our best and we’re not good enough to win, you can quite easily accept it. But when you’re watching lads who are very good players underachieve because they’re letting their desire to do well get in the way of their ability, it’s a killer. They were nearly taking it too seriously and worrying about the consequences too much.”

It led to performances that were anaemic and wan and never remotely threatened the kind of thunder they brought to the second half last Sunday. Kilkenny and Clare last summer, Tipperary in this year’s league semi-final, the drawn game down in Wexford Park – they were all of a piece. Dublin were reactive, they looked cowed almost by the prospect of having to live up to the summer of 2011.

Visibly irritated
After they disposed of Wexford in the replay at Parnell Park, Daly was visibly irritated at being asked about the quality of the game. The clear implication was that they'd be windshield grime by the time Kilkenny were done with them. It tugged at his tail and it was all he could do to suppress a snarl in response. "I just felt there was a slight overreaction to the drawn game, that was all. People got carried away with 2011 and they were telling us that we did as well. And if we did, we were surely trying to right that this year. To be fair, I think we're making a right stab at it.

“But to some people, we should be going down and rolling Wexford over. And even the night we won the replay by eight points – comfortably by eight now to be honest – there was still questions being asked about how we played.

“And I was thinking, like, what do you need to beat Wexford by? Do we need to get it up to 12 or 13? Is that enough to be hammering Wexford by? There’d be an element of that in me – like, what’s the score to be here before people are happy?”

In the end, this is where he wants Dublin to be. Mid-summer, training abuzz, going in as underdogs even though the favourites are losing bodies by the new time. Constipation relieved for now at least.

“We certainly weren’t surprised to make a game of it last Sunday. We quietly fancied ourselves.

“In fairness, it was very quietly because nobody else did! You’ll have everybody saying now that Kilkenny will put us away in the replay. But sure let them say it.”