ON SUNDAY THE Dublin senior team will take the latest step on a route that they hope will culminate in early September with their fifth Sam Maguire triumph on the bounce.

It would round off what has been a remarkable spell for the county but success has not just been the preserve of the senior side.

It’s been a highly profitable decade for the level underneath the flagship adult side. All-Ireland U21 titles have been swept up in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2017. The shift in the grade to U20 has not altered the pattern. On Saturday Cork stand in the path of Dublin being crowned 2019 champions.

“I think there was a period in the early 90s when Dublin didn’t appear in the U21 grade, it probably wasn’t a very bright idea,” says Dublin U20 boss Tom Gray.

“So (Dublin) got back into it in the mid to late 90s and certainly if you take Jim Gavin’s time from ’08 onwards, they were very successful and then Dessie was incredibly successful with the group of players.

“Very talented groups of players coming through at the time so that needs to be kept in context. It’s been a good grade for Dublin.”

Scan an eye through the teamsheets of those successful U21 teams and the cornerstones of Jim Gavin’s current senior force jump off the page.

The 2010 side included Rory O’Carroll, Jonny Cooper, James McCarthy and Dean Rock. The 2012 outfit featured Jack McCaffrey, Ciaran Kilkenny and Paul Mannion. The class of 2014 were spearheaded by David Byrne, John Small, McCaffrey, Brian Fenton, Mannion, Cormac Costello and John Small. 

And the most recent success was facilitated by the efforts in 2017 of Eoin Murchan, Brian Howard and Con O’Callaghan.

“All the players in our squad, to a man, they naturally have ambition to play for Dublin,” admits Gray.

“All we’re trying to do is show them the tools and give them a pathway, to give them that opportunity. Naturally you can see lads who’ve come into the Dublin team recently, early after U20, naturally it makes it look more achievable for them. So yeah, that element is pretty good.

“Liam Flatman, who is injured, has played senior in the National League earlier in the year against Galway. He’s not available because of his injury. I think a lot player will have seen, ‘Look, there’s Liam, I’m as good as him, I can get in’, so absolutely, from a vision point of view, it’s good to have those sort of role models.

“Peadar Ó Cofaigh is on our panel, he’s on the senior panel as well. There is very good communication in terms of managing his workload. Obviously if you have a front liner, he wouldn’t be available to you.”

In Gray’s list of priorities the development of players ranks higher than the procurement of silverware. He’s also in favour of the switch to summer action instead of the previous spring programme of fixtures.

“I think the timing of the competition in parallel with the senior is good. I think U21 when it’s played in March and April, I think that was pretty bad because a lot of kids playing U21, the better players would have been playing senior intercounty league plus Sigerson and other college competitions. There’s a lot of evidence of players who would have suffered from a workload point of view at that time so moving the competition to this time of year is a positive. The core role really is to develop players.”