Dublin just don't miss a beat

It is little more than a decade ago when pundits were telling us that the days of teams retaining the All-Ireland football championship were over.

Workloads had become too much it was said and the demands of winning a championship were such that doing so again the following year was inevitably too much. That provides a context for the remarkable achievements of Dublin over the past four years. What was considered impossible relatively recently has now been done repeatedly by Dublin. There are some lessons in that.

The most obvious one is that broad-sweep declarations are probably best avoided. Circumstances change, perceived wisdom changes with them, and who knows what the future holds. Dublin’s circumstances currently concerns many people as some believe that the current situation might be the situation in perpetuity. This is the view that Dublin has such strength in depth that they may always be able to replenish their teams and in that sense remain hugely competitive even if not necessarily winning the All-Ireland every year.

Colm O’Rourke mentioned this on Sunday after the match when he suggested that of the next 20 or 30 All-Irelands Dublin would win most of them unless the county was split. While he bangs this drum fairly regularly he usually presents it as giving an opportunity to more young Dublin players to play in Croke Park. It is interesting to see that it is genuinely in fact an attempt to prevent Dublin winning as often. This, of course, is not of necessity a bad idea.

 

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