WE’VE NEVER QUITE been able to nail down whether Ciaran Archer scored nine or 10 goals in the 2019 All-Ireland U20 championship for Dublin.
There’s a question mark over whether he registered two or three goals in Dublin’s 4-21 demolition of Longford at the beginning of that campaign.
We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he finished the campaign with 10-35, a monstrous season of scoring by any standard.
And when he curled in the last of those goals in the 11th minute of that year’s All-Ireland U20 final, punishing a fumbled short kick-out by the Cork goalkeeper, the possibilities seemed endless. For player and county.
It left Dublin 1-6 to 0-0 up and poised to win their fifth All-Ireland at the grade in the 2010s. With the senior team just weeks away from clinching the five-in-a-row, another decade of sky blue dominance appeared almost a given.
The young Dubs caved in after that though, suffering a 17-point swing on the scoreboard by full time to lose by eight points.
Some of them, including Archer, got back to the 2020 All-Ireland U20 final but lost to Galway, playing second fiddle throughout.
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Ciarán Archer was one of Dublin's stars of the U20 Championship in 2019. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Five years on, Dublin haven’t won even a Leinster U20 championship since, let alone an All-Ireland, suffering final losses to Offaly and Kildare and coming up short to Louth in both the 2024 and 2025 provincial semi-finals.
It hasn’t been going a whole pile better for the Dublin minors who, since winning the 2017 Leinster title, have won just two provincial titles, in 2022 and 2023. Longford beat Dublin in last year’s Leinster minor final and a brilliant young Louth side hammered the Dubs at the semi-final stage this year.
We won’t say the Dublin conveyor belt has suddenly come grinding to a halt but, compared to what came before, it is a considerable drop off.
Which makes for useful background when considering the senior team and their present predicament. Former Dublin minor and U21 manager Dessie Farrell will take his seniors to face Derry in neutral Newry this Saturday evening knowing that a loss could very well end their Championship campaign.
Conor Glass and Eoin McEvoy celebrate during the 2024 Division 1 league final. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
The Derry seniors are in similar straits. It’s only 15 months ago that Derry and Dublin contested a National League Division 1 final that one outlet pretty accurately reported as ‘one of the wildest games of football we’ve seen in Croke Park in a very long time’.
Derry won on penalties but it amounted to a thrilling bout between two heavyweight performers who left each other black and blue. Their All-Ireland credentials, it seemed, were evident.
Since then, Derry have played 16 National League and Championship games and won just two. And only one of them in the regulation 70 minutes. They have gone from Taylor Swift to Graham Taylor in about the time it takes to say Ange Postecoglu.
Dublin’s numbers are better, admittedly, with just six defeats from 18 games in the same period since that 2024 league final but the losses have been crushing. Last year’s Championship exit was their earliest since 2009. This summer, they finally relinquished the Leinster title. And prior to this year, the last time they lost twice in the same Championship was 15 years ago.
The question is, which of the two counties will bounce back quickest? The answer to that one could actually be Derry.
Whilst Dublin has suffered a dearth of underage success, the Oak Leaf County has won three of the last five All-Ireland minor titles. U20 success hasn’t yet followed but, crucially, there appears to be more than enough quality young performers capable of making the step up to senior. St Patrick’s College Maghera won this year’s Hogan Cup too.
Eoin McEvoy, Patrick McGurk and Lachlan Murray, all starters in Derry’s 2020 minor final win, featured against Galway last time out in the senior championship. James Sargent is the pick of the bunch from the 2023 and 2024 teams that won All-Irelands.
“I’d be really excited about James Sargent, unfortunately he’s done his ACL but he has a big future,” said former Derry captain Chrissy McKaigue. “Eamon Young is another player I’d be really excited about that’s yet to come.
“Derry have a fair bit of talent to come and probably a nice age profile already in the senior squad that would suggest they’re going to be knocking around there or thereabouts for the next number of years.”
Dessie Farrell is managing this Dublin team through its latest transition. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Dublin aren’t nearly as advanced. And, worryingly for them, they’re not producing the rough diamonds that they once did, for senior managers like Pat Gilroy, Jim Gavin and Dessie Farrell to polish up.
Archer made just two senior appearances for Dublin after his U20 career, starting against Longford in the 2022 O’Byrne Cup and coming on three weeks later as a sub against Kerry in the league. And that was that.
The 2020 minors, whose championship lasted just one game — a loss to Meath — produced about the greatest yield of future seniors from that period. Hugh O’Sullivan, Theo Clancy, Greg McEneaney, Alex Gavin and Luke Breathnach were all minors that year and have played in this year’s Championship. But none of them are coming through with underage medals, even at provincial level.
It’s 2017 since Dublin produced an underage team – their U21s won the All-Ireland that year – that contained truly exciting talents, laden with medals. Future All-Stars Con O’Callaghan, Colm Basquel, Brian Howard and Eoin Murchan were all on that team. Paddy Small didn’t even start the All-Ireland final win.
Now that the bulk of their elders from the golden era have moved on, it’s been left to those 2017 U21 players, along with a few others like Ciaran Kilkenny, John Small, David Byrne and the evergreen Stephen Cluxton to provide the inspiration. The evidence so far is that it’s too great an ask.
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Alan Brogan pointed the finger of blame for the faltering supply line at the schools system in Dublin.
“I believe the drop off in standard of Gaelic football in Dublin secondary schools in the last 10 years is a huge issue,” he tweeted last month. “Most of my football between the age of 12 and 17 was played in St Declan’s.”
Brogan’s former Dublin forward colleague during the boom times, Diarmuid Connolly, shrugged.
“Look, it’s very hard to pinpoint what’s happening,” said BoyleSports ambassador Connolly. “We had a generational team for the last two decades and that talent pool doesn’t come along that often. I think we made hay whilst it was there.
“It’s like cycles, and the same with my club Vincent’s, we had two very successful teams back-to-back and now they’re struggling a little bit. It just takes time.
“It’ll take putting the work down at the grassroots level, getting back into the schools and getting that competition really competitive again, especially at the senior level in schools.
“Being competitive for minors, being competitive for U21s, being competitive at senior level for All-Irelands over the last two decades, look, I think one year you can nearly write it off to a changing in the guard or whatever it is. I don’t think it’s a big talking point around Dublin. They’ll be back, don’t worry about that.”
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As Dublin football's production line slows down, Derry's is ramping up
WE’VE NEVER QUITE been able to nail down whether Ciaran Archer scored nine or 10 goals in the 2019 All-Ireland U20 championship for Dublin.
There’s a question mark over whether he registered two or three goals in Dublin’s 4-21 demolition of Longford at the beginning of that campaign.
We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he finished the campaign with 10-35, a monstrous season of scoring by any standard.
And when he curled in the last of those goals in the 11th minute of that year’s All-Ireland U20 final, punishing a fumbled short kick-out by the Cork goalkeeper, the possibilities seemed endless. For player and county.
It left Dublin 1-6 to 0-0 up and poised to win their fifth All-Ireland at the grade in the 2010s. With the senior team just weeks away from clinching the five-in-a-row, another decade of sky blue dominance appeared almost a given.
The young Dubs caved in after that though, suffering a 17-point swing on the scoreboard by full time to lose by eight points.
Some of them, including Archer, got back to the 2020 All-Ireland U20 final but lost to Galway, playing second fiddle throughout.
Five years on, Dublin haven’t won even a Leinster U20 championship since, let alone an All-Ireland, suffering final losses to Offaly and Kildare and coming up short to Louth in both the 2024 and 2025 provincial semi-finals.
It hasn’t been going a whole pile better for the Dublin minors who, since winning the 2017 Leinster title, have won just two provincial titles, in 2022 and 2023. Longford beat Dublin in last year’s Leinster minor final and a brilliant young Louth side hammered the Dubs at the semi-final stage this year.
We won’t say the Dublin conveyor belt has suddenly come grinding to a halt but, compared to what came before, it is a considerable drop off.
Which makes for useful background when considering the senior team and their present predicament. Former Dublin minor and U21 manager Dessie Farrell will take his seniors to face Derry in neutral Newry this Saturday evening knowing that a loss could very well end their Championship campaign.
The Derry seniors are in similar straits. It’s only 15 months ago that Derry and Dublin contested a National League Division 1 final that one outlet pretty accurately reported as ‘one of the wildest games of football we’ve seen in Croke Park in a very long time’.
Derry won on penalties but it amounted to a thrilling bout between two heavyweight performers who left each other black and blue. Their All-Ireland credentials, it seemed, were evident.
Since then, Derry have played 16 National League and Championship games and won just two. And only one of them in the regulation 70 minutes. They have gone from Taylor Swift to Graham Taylor in about the time it takes to say Ange Postecoglu.
Dublin’s numbers are better, admittedly, with just six defeats from 18 games in the same period since that 2024 league final but the losses have been crushing. Last year’s Championship exit was their earliest since 2009. This summer, they finally relinquished the Leinster title. And prior to this year, the last time they lost twice in the same Championship was 15 years ago.
The question is, which of the two counties will bounce back quickest? The answer to that one could actually be Derry.
Whilst Dublin has suffered a dearth of underage success, the Oak Leaf County has won three of the last five All-Ireland minor titles. U20 success hasn’t yet followed but, crucially, there appears to be more than enough quality young performers capable of making the step up to senior. St Patrick’s College Maghera won this year’s Hogan Cup too.
Eoin McEvoy, Patrick McGurk and Lachlan Murray, all starters in Derry’s 2020 minor final win, featured against Galway last time out in the senior championship. James Sargent is the pick of the bunch from the 2023 and 2024 teams that won All-Irelands.
“I’d be really excited about James Sargent, unfortunately he’s done his ACL but he has a big future,” said former Derry captain Chrissy McKaigue. “Eamon Young is another player I’d be really excited about that’s yet to come.
“Derry have a fair bit of talent to come and probably a nice age profile already in the senior squad that would suggest they’re going to be knocking around there or thereabouts for the next number of years.”
Dublin aren’t nearly as advanced. And, worryingly for them, they’re not producing the rough diamonds that they once did, for senior managers like Pat Gilroy, Jim Gavin and Dessie Farrell to polish up.
Archer made just two senior appearances for Dublin after his U20 career, starting against Longford in the 2022 O’Byrne Cup and coming on three weeks later as a sub against Kerry in the league. And that was that.
The 2020 minors, whose championship lasted just one game — a loss to Meath — produced about the greatest yield of future seniors from that period. Hugh O’Sullivan, Theo Clancy, Greg McEneaney, Alex Gavin and Luke Breathnach were all minors that year and have played in this year’s Championship. But none of them are coming through with underage medals, even at provincial level.
It’s 2017 since Dublin produced an underage team – their U21s won the All-Ireland that year – that contained truly exciting talents, laden with medals. Future All-Stars Con O’Callaghan, Colm Basquel, Brian Howard and Eoin Murchan were all on that team. Paddy Small didn’t even start the All-Ireland final win.
Now that the bulk of their elders from the golden era have moved on, it’s been left to those 2017 U21 players, along with a few others like Ciaran Kilkenny, John Small, David Byrne and the evergreen Stephen Cluxton to provide the inspiration. The evidence so far is that it’s too great an ask.
Alan Brogan pointed the finger of blame for the faltering supply line at the schools system in Dublin.
“I believe the drop off in standard of Gaelic football in Dublin secondary schools in the last 10 years is a huge issue,” he tweeted last month. “Most of my football between the age of 12 and 17 was played in St Declan’s.”
Brogan’s former Dublin forward colleague during the boom times, Diarmuid Connolly, shrugged.
“Look, it’s very hard to pinpoint what’s happening,” said BoyleSports ambassador Connolly. “We had a generational team for the last two decades and that talent pool doesn’t come along that often. I think we made hay whilst it was there.
“It’s like cycles, and the same with my club Vincent’s, we had two very successful teams back-to-back and now they’re struggling a little bit. It just takes time.
“It’ll take putting the work down at the grassroots level, getting back into the schools and getting that competition really competitive again, especially at the senior level in schools.
“Being competitive for minors, being competitive for U21s, being competitive at senior level for All-Irelands over the last two decades, look, I think one year you can nearly write it off to a changing in the guard or whatever it is. I don’t think it’s a big talking point around Dublin. They’ll be back, don’t worry about that.”
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