DESSIE FARRELL ADMITTED some of Dublin’s long-serving stars may be ‘considering their future’ in the wake of last night’s All-Ireland championship exit at the hands of Galway.
Dublin were stunned in the second half as a four-point interval advantage evaporated and they lost 0-17 to 0-16 in the quarter-final tie.
Their manager conceded that the end of their 2024 campaign could prompt change in their playing squad.
“Dublin have no entitlement, no more than anybody else. That era that everyone looks back to, has moved on.
“It’s a different generation of players now. I’m sure there’s some of them in there who will be considering their future. It might be the last time that we see them play for Dublin.
“They’ve been brilliant warriors. They died with their boots on today. But there is another generation of players in there who have the hunger and desire to want to continue and go on to wear the Dublin jersey with pride and honour and I’m sure they will do that.
“They’re the type of players that don’t want it necessarily to be about themselves. You don’t have to dwell on that. It’s inherent though in players’ understanding in terms of where things are at, in terms of their evolution of the squad and what the future might hold.”
Farrell analysed the game and pinpointed where Galway broke his team down in the second half.
“Great credit to Galway. We knew they’d come at us hard and throw the kitchen sink at it and we just found it hard to come up with the answers they posed. Ultimately, we came up short.
“They played very well and denied us time and space. We struggled to break it down, which we had been good at over the recent games against that type of opposition but we found it hard to get shots off under that kind of pressure. Hats off to Galway. They were far superior in that second half.
“We just seemed to run out of energy in the second half. The pep just wasn’t in the step. Execution was off and we were turning over ball but then when we turned them over, we struggled to get up the field with pace which is something we’re normally very good at doing. Our ability to get forward quickly and get back quickly, definitely diminished in that second half.”
Dublin got a limited impact off their bench but Farrell outlined the thinking behind parachuting Jack McCaffrey, Paul Mannion and James McCarthy into their starting side, rather than holding them in reserve.
“You can become very predictable too, doing that and some of those lads were coming back from injury and we felt had more in the tank and more to offer. It worked well in the first half but we started to struggle in the second and just couldn’t find a way.”
