THERE ARE FEW issues as prominent in the GAA today as that of the dual player. In the last few weeks, Cork have seen both sides of the issue as Aidan Walsh opted for hurling while Eoin Cadogan committed to the footballers.

Corkman Ger Cunningham, who recently took over from Anthony Daly as Dublin hurling manager, knows he has a job on his hands if he wants to convince some of the most talented hurlers in the county to forsake the opportunity to win the Sam Maguire and come into his set-up.

Cunningham says he hasn’t yet talked to former underage hurling stars Ciaran Kilkenny and Cormac Costello but with Jim Gavin on the record as saying he doesn’t think playing both codes is feasible, Cunningham knows he will have to offer a similar chance of All-Ireland success if he is to sway any of the footballers.

“Dual is difficult, there’s no doubt about that,” Cunningham said.

“You can see how difficult it is. But a lot of those Dublin guys have All-Ireland medals in football, it would be great to see them get All-Ireland medals in hurling.

“With a degree of co-operation it’s something that could be looked at but whether it will playing just one sport, I don’t know.

“There are guys playing football who are obviously very good hurlers, I would have seen them over the last number of years. Obviously they have commitments to the football team at the moment and maybe it is something down the road that they might look at. We’ll have to earn that right, hopefully that they see an opportunity to win an All-Ireland medal with the hurlers, and that at some stage in the future they might consider it. Jim Gavin has said on record that he doesn’t see it as a situation where people can do the two, so we’ll see.”

Cunningham had previously been involved with Jimmy Barry-Murphy's backroom team with Cork. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

Anthony Daly brought success to Dublin hurling that hadn’t been seen in some time, winning a Leinster title, a league crown and leading the team to two All-Ireland semi-finals. Dublin county board chairman Andy Kettle has said that Cunningham was brought in to improve on the foundation built by Daly, which is quite a task for a first time intercounty manager.

However, Cunningham is focusing solely on getting good performances rather than having an All-Ireland-or-bust mentality.

“My view is that I’ll be targetting working with the players, getting to know the players over the next few months, seeing where as a coaching team we can try to improve them and looking at trying to improve performance on the pitch. That’s the whole focus, nothing else other than that.”

While not making a big proclamation about delivering an All-Ireland, Cunningham did say he wanted to make the side more consistent, and eradicate the year-by-year fluctuation of the team’s fortunes in the recent past.

“If you look at it they would have been year up, year down, year up, year down,” Cunningham said.

“But when it was year up, it was really, really good and I think an awful lot of people, if at the start of last year you were picking your top four teams they would have expected Dublin to have been in there after their performances in 2013.

“Some of the best players in the country play for Dublin so the nucleus of the talent is there, that’s the challenge we see as the backroom team to try and raise the level all round and try to get back up to 2013 level and beyond.”

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