GAELIC GAMES:AFTER BEATING Cork a fortnight ago, Anthony Daly didn't want to go on about his Clare team in the 1990s but the surface similarities between them and the Dublin side that Daly takes into the county's first league final in 65 years are unavoidable.
Both then and now the teams came into the season after significant championship setbacks and pieced together creditable league campaigns before going into a final to face a Kilkenny team, which despite losing their All-Ireland the previous year, was and is still rated as a front runner for this summer.
Clare 1995 and Dublin this year also share one notable failing, a difficulty translating abundant possession into scores and, 16 years ago, that problem manifested itself in a poor scoring return and comprehensive defeat.
Daly may not want to revisit the poverty of performance from the Clare team he captained in that league final, but he did say two weeks ago in Cork he’d take the Liam MacCarthy that he found himself hoisting four months later.
Tomorrow’s final comes as a great opportunity for Dublin. It’s serious recognition for the team and a major step on the way to joining the game’s top table. Emerging sides don’t reach league finals unless they’ve attained a certain standard.
Such progress may not be a guaranteed passport to further success but breakthrough counties in the 1990s – Offaly, Clare, Wexford and Limerick – all reached league finals before championship improvement. Dublin’s performances so far have offered verifiable evidence of improvement. For a start there are the actual results. Lucky to take a point out of Waterford on the first day of the season, all of the other points accumulated were hard-earned.
Abundant wides against Tipperary complicated the task of beating the All-Ireland champions but there was no doubting the merit of the win. Then there has been the resilience. After losing to Galway – the only team to defeat both of tomorrow’s finalists – because of a late sucker punch in a match they should have won well, with Kilkenny and Cork to come there was good reason to fear that Dublin would get no points from those last two outings.
Instead they fought hard and when second-half goals looked to have unhinged their challenge they ran off three unanswered points to erase the deficit in each case.
Although Daly has been hit by by injuries he has not only coped but developed his panel in doing so and prepared a team that has been to date physically able for the intensity of taking on the best teams.
There’s also been a greater ambition to the team’s play, a willingness to try things on the ball and passages of fluent, productive hurling. The tendency to squander chances has left the team vulnerable on occasion but with one exception, they have survived unbeaten in their matches.
Kilkenny come into this with a slight easing of their own injury burden. Despite a largely subdued campaign, they topped Division One and, apart from a meltdown at the back against Galway, have been able to resist attempts to take advantage of their temporarily reduced circumstances.
They are the leading goal scorers in the division and that is key to their status, as in a number of matches the ability to find the net has influenced – if not always changed – the outcome.
Conal Keaney and Ryan Dwyer have arrived and provided ball-winning capacity, Paul Ryan has added work rate and confidence to his accuracy from placed balls and David O’Callaghan was sensational on his return to the attack against Cork.
It’s hard to judge Kilkenny when they are missing important players but they go into tomorrow’s match having failed to beat Dublin in two attempts this year – once in the shadow contest of the Walsh Cup final and then in the league earlier this month.
The fluency and remorseless ability to put teams away when on top has been missing and their experimental defences have been less formidable than usual. But there is still within the DNA of the panel a knowledge of how to play occasions like this.
It may be Dublin’s first national final in 50 years but tomorrow occupies a lower significance on Kilkenny’s register. That’s a comfortable way to approach the game and without inflicting the punishment beating of last year’s Leinster semi-final, the favourites should prevail.
KILKENNY: D Herity; J Dalton, B Hogan (c), N Hickey; P Hogan, J Tyrrell, JJ Delaney; TJ Reid, M Rice; J Fitzpatrick, M Ruth, E Larkin; C Fennelly, E Brennan, R Hogan.
DUBLIN: G Maguire; N Corcoran, T Brady, P Kelly; J McCaffrey (c), J Boland, S Durkan; L Rushe, A McCrabbe; C McCormack, R ODwyer, C Keaney; P Ryan, D O’Callaghan, D Plunkett.
