Category:
Coman Goggins: Dublin are flying right now but things change

04 Jan 2017
Posted in: Dublin GAA and County
It would have been great to have bought a house three or four years
ago rather than at the height of the Celtic Tiger.That’s what comes to
mind when people ask me if I wish my time as a Dublin inter-county
football had come during the recent golden run.
“Wouldn’t
you love to have been born ten years later?” I’m asked. I was called
up in late 1999 and left after a chat with management in early 2008,
that was my time and I loved it.

It is long gone now and the team we had is left to look back on the
chances that slipped away. We’ve often been accused of failing and
hype is a word that has followed Dublin football, but I can’t say that
is the reason we came up short. Sport is about fine margins, be that
mentally or physically, and on a couple of occasions we were on the
wrong side of those key factors.
I’ll come to the factors
that did make a difference but I don’t really see it as hype, as such.
We lost to Kerry in Semple Stadium in a replay 2001 when Maurice Fitz
kicked that sublime sideline to draw the first game.
Talk
about fine margins; on another day, we squeeze through and all of a
sudden you’ve beaten Kerry in championship and you have a totally
different narrative.
A year later in 2002, that was
another lost opportunity against Armagh who went on to win the Sam
Maguire. We matched them all the way and there was an element of
chance with Ray
Cosgrove’s late free hitting the upright and landing safely into
Kieran McGeeney’s arms

We’d just won our first Leinster title in seven years and the mood in
the camp was very good. At that time given the lack of success,
lifting the Delaney Cup was a big deal and the province was very
competitive with both Westmeath and Laois winning titles in the
preceding years.
It would have been impossible to
imagine that from 2005 onwards Dublin would win 11 of the next 12
titles, and it was probably during this dominant period when no
All-Ireland was collected that the biggest questions were posed of the
group.
The whole hype piece possibly grew out of this
and you must remember that it was a different time where for many
years there was an almost open-door policy into training
sessions.
It was arguably the norm back then that
people could go in and watch A v B games in Artane and, judging by
which team Stephen Cluxton was on, people would spread the word about
what the team was going to be. Or what they felt it would be, more
likely.
I think it may have been Eamonn Fitzmaurice who
was the first Kerry manager to take sessions behind closed doors a
couple of years ago, so it would appear it was a common enough thing,
simply the way back then too.

Teams were released earlier in the week too, as opposed to Friday
nights when Pat Gilroy and Jim Gavin release theirs, so players were
exposed to that earlier in the week. The analysis, the perceived
match-ups, and I suppose this fed into the hype.
I
remember in 2003 when we were travelling to Clones to play Derry in a
qualifier, where the team was to be named a couple of hours before the
game, but talk on the bus was that there was a team already doing the
rounds. Despite going on to win the game there was a frustration for
guys to learn they were out of the team via a whisper. In any team,
business or sport, communication is critical and I think judging by
the impact Jim’s bench have on proceedings everyone in the Dublin camp
is very clear on their role and the part they play in the team.
No one gets animated about the Dublin teams named nowadays,
partly because no one actually knows if it’s true. When the media and
supporters know less, the microscope can’t focus in as much.
I heard Bernard Brogan talking about being named on the bench
for the All-Ireland final replay of 2016 and his reaction was probably
a lot different to what would’ve happened in 2003. It didn’t faze him,
he still knew he had a job to do, because not starting didn’t mean you
had no role. No player is happy to start off the bench, but when the
lines of communication between management and players are open, guys
better understand the bigger picture and over time you develop a
highly engaged squad.
Paul ‘Pillar’ Caffrey brought the panel on too because
after losing to Laois in Leinster 2003 and Westmeath a year later, we
regained the title. I think we had the players to win Sam that season
but you have to grasp the opportunities when they’re presented. We
were seven points ahead of Mayo in the 2006 All-Ireland semi-final but
not adapting as the game swung against us gave Mayo a glimmer that
they gratefully accepted.

The world has shifted in GAA since I started at the tail-end of the
last century. We thought we were advanced in our approach under Pillar
— as if you couldn’t possibly do more — but it’s at a new level. Pat
brought in early-morning sessions and took more control over
information and access to the panel.
Jim appears to have
brought that on even further and, like professional athletes, players
are now being tracked using GPS monitors. There’s a science to
training now where everything is measured and tracked to ensure every
player is hitting peak fitness and reaching the same levels. The days
of taking a breather for a couple of sprints are long gone!
Similarly players aren’t just doing weights now for the sake of
it. They’re all lean and powerful, everything has become much more
advanced focusing on how something adds value and how it benefits the
team.
Gone are the days of the team being beaten and then
the corner-forward gets the curly finger, even though he hasn’t been
given anything to work with. Now the subs are based on statistics, the
ground being covered, and who is fatigued. There’s a strategy to
everything.
Dublin are flying right now but things change
every few years. Tyrone were at the top, Kerry, and then Donegal
brought through their system before the Dubs took over again. It’s a
bit like the property boom, it won’t last forever so the key for all
Dubs is to enjoy it as it will most likely pop at some stage.