DEAN ROCK IS confident Dublin can continue to compete for All-Irelands as they navigate this transitional period, warning “there’s a long way to go” until the big prizes are handed out.
Missing a handful of regulars, they’ve endured a shaky start to the season after losing their opening Division 1 games to Armagh and Kerry.
14 new players have been added to Dessie Farrell’s panel this year, in addition a number the previous campaign.
While in the past youngsters spent a season or two germinating in the squad before being thrown into competitive action, the spate of retirements in recent years made it necessary for Farrell to blood his new players quickly.
It will require time before the young guns adjust to senior inter-county football according to the Sky Blues marksman.
However, Rock suggests Dublin’s ultimate focus remains on recapturing Sam Maguire in July.
“As Dublin footballers, we expect to win and be very competitive,” he said at an AIG Dublin GAA event. “Nothing is going to change, even though we’re in this transitional phase as the moment.
“We certainly know where we want to get to as a group and what we want to achieve. Everyone knows (our aim for the year), that’s where we want to get to. It’s February, there’s a long way to go in the National League, there’s a long way to go until championship.
“There’s been a massive influx of new players on the panel this year, 14 new players, so we’re trying to integrate them guys into the team and even just getting to know them. From my perspective, you were so comfortable with the lads who were there (before).
“Obviously there’s so many lads who’ve gone over the last number of years, your best friends and guys you could easily communicate with. So it’s totally different trying to get to know new guys. There is a transition there, absolutely but we certainly still want to be very, very competitive in this year’s championship and the remainder of the league.
“It’s quite evident there is a certain element of transition and that doesn’t mean that we’re going out expecting to lose games. We’re still going out, expecting to win and to perform.
“But we understand exactly where we’re at at the moment. Maybe the bigger picture is exposing these newer lads to game time and giving them that exposure, because without that, they’re not going to improve as players. It’s really important for them.”
Asked if the quality of player coming through compares with previous years, Rock said the newcomers to the squad have “massive talent”.
“The big thing is that these guys have to be given time. When I started or James McCarthy or Con O’Callaghan, it took us time to get acclimatised to inter-county football and the demands of training day in and day out.
“Even from a tactical perspective getting used to game plans. It’s probably not that in depth at club level or U20 level. So there’s a huge amount of learning for these guys to have and to do. They’re improving week on week and there certainly are a lot of talented players there.
“I’ve seen it over the last couple of weeks but they probably just need a little bit more time and hopefully we’ll see the best for them over the next couple of weeks in the league and obviously in the summer as well.”
After an era of domination, the common consensus is that Dublin have come back into the chasing pack. Their All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Mayo, coupled with a poor start to 2022, added fuel to that fire.
“I think there’s always a decent amount of noise out there around the Dublin team, whether it’s good, bad or indifferent,” he remarks.” I think that just comes with the territory of being a Dublin footballer. We know exactly where we want to get to and how we want to get there.
“With that little bit of adversity, comes massive opportunity to help you grow as a team. It gets you to work that little bit harder. Naturally, we knew that our run wasn’t going to last forever.
“We were going to lose some day. We absolutely accepted that last year. Even in the league, we know exactly where we’re at in terms of what we’re trying to achieve. We’re looking to put in some good performances, we haven’t really got the results to date.
“But in terms of feeling any pressure or doubt after a couple of defeats, there’s too much experience in that group to go down that route or feel that way.”
The 31-year-old Ballymun Kickhams forward believes Dublin failure to perform in the second quarter of games has cost them in their opening two games.
“It probably hasn’t been as bad as two defeats probably have looked. Obviously we’d analyse and assess the games. Break it down and we just had two poor second quarters in both of those games.
“That was probably the big learning for us. The second halves of those games we played a little bit better and won both those halves. In particular it was the second quarters that let us down, both against Armagh and Kerry.
“So that’s just something that we have to try and address. Now looking forward to Mayo this weekend and hoping to right a few wrongs there.
“We’re working away in the background to try and put four good quarters together. We haven’t done that yet. We’ve done it in patches.”
McCarthy, O’Callaghan, Mick Fitzsimons, Jonny Cooper, Paddy Small, Aaron Byrne, Cormac Costello, Eoin Murchan and Robbie McDaid sat out the Kerry game and Rock is hopeful a number of those will return for Saturday’s showdown against Mayo.
He says revenge won’t be on the minds of the Dublin players after James Horan’s team ended their long run as champions last August.
“Hopefully this week we’ll have clean bill of health ahead of a great game against Mayo and we can kick off our season from there.
“Tt’s never really come into the Dublin mindset in terms that revenge, it’s just pretty much another game for us. Another opportunity to try and perform a little bit better and try on the things we’re working on in training.
“Obviously we lost that semi final to Mayo last year deservedly so, they were the better team on the day. But in terms of added motivation just because we lost last year, we won’t be going down that route.”
The42 is on Instagram! Tap the button below on your phone to follow us!
