Con O’Callaghan, the leading scorer in Dublin’s Under-21 championship campaign this season, has refuted the suggestion that talented, upcoming players from the capital are merely a product of lucrative resources and Irish Sports Council grants.
O’Callaghan is hoping to push his way into the county senior team after seeing his under-21 season end in disappointment with an All Ireland semi-final defeat to the eventual champions Mayo.
And speaking yesterday, when he was awarded the EirGrid GAA Football Under-21 Player of the Month for March, he dismissed the suggestion that Dublin’s dominance of Gaelic football was all down to money.
Through a special budget measure, agreed during the presidency of Seán Kelly, close to €1 million a year was given to the GAA by the Irish Sports Council (ISC) to fund the running of projects in Dublin GAA alone.
On top of that, they have the option of taking up regular tenancy in the new €12 million GAA Centre of Excellence at Abbotstown. And they have their pick of sponsors, associate and otherwise.
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But O’Callaghan says they are no different to anyone else in their game preparation.
“I don’t really feed into that,” he said. “I’m not sure what grants they [Dublin county board] get from the Sports Council. We just go out and play in our facilities. We just train on a normal club pitch. We don’t have anything special.
“We just train in Innisfails with the seniors, and wherever we could get with the Under-21s – it was St Anne’s, DCU, nothing major. We trained in a normal gym. People say a lot, but I don’t think we have any special advantages.”
Yet, for all the backing they receive, in that Under-21 semi-final with Mayo they were four points ahead with just minutes left and still let the game slip.
“You think we are in control and are ahead but it’s tough to know you could have done things differently — we just weren’t able to finish the thing out,” O’Callaghan said, sighing.
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His next target is to try and break into Jim Gavin’s senior starting 15. It will prove no easy task.
“I’m back in the senior set-up,” he said. “We got a break for the club championship and I’m back with the seniors in a week or two. Championship is soon enough and I missed a bit with them but I’m looking to try and push my way into the panel and put myself in some sort of contention.
“I have had two training sessions with them since the Under-21s ended. I was staying on top of gym [work] with the seniors and training the whole way.
“You learn a lot straightaway,” he recounts of the experience of stepping up. “You learn how to play different positions and it’s probably not any faster than the Under-21s — but you need a lot of composure and confidence playing with them. The lads have been playing for ten years and are on top of their game.
“It’s a challenge to try and get a jersey but I’ll be looking to push forward this year. They are the top footballers in the game at the moment and if I can challenge them in any way it’s a good experience. You won’t get a jersey easy.”
“We just train on a normal club pitch. We don’t have anything special
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Meanwhile, John Horan, the Leinster GAA chairman, has also rejected the notion that Dublin get special treatment — and knocked back the theory that both this year’s Leinster hurling and football championships are dead rubber.
In football, Dublin are expected to cruise to another provincial title, while neither Galway or Dublin look equipped to stop Kilkenny’s dominance of the hurling terrain.
However, Horan feels that both teams will be severely tested this summer.
“I’ve no doubt Dublin and Kilkenny will face strong opposition in this year’s O’Keefe and Delaney Cups,” he said, while also praising Kilkenny’s holistic attitude towards developing other emerging hurling counties in the eastern province.
“Last year the Under-16 hurlers of Naas took part in a hurling competition in Kilkenny and beat Ballyhale Shamrocks in the final - that’s an indication of the commitment in Kilkenny to hurling inside and outside the county,” he said.
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“The fact that a team from Naas that found it difficult to get equal opposition in their own county were welcomed into Kilkenny, this is part of what we would see as the development of underage players in the province.”
The Leinster boss also dismissed the notion that the €12 million GAA Centre of Excellence would be reserved primarily for Dublin teams.
“Last Saturday in Abbotstown, there were 72 teams from Meath, Kildare and Wicklow all partaking in a cross-county competition. This is an initiative we hope to drive on within the province because it’s games at a proper competition level that bring on players,” he added.
“It’s not highlights stuff, it’s not media-grabbing stuff, but it is work we hope will close those gaps that everyone highlights exists within the province.
“Equally I’m delighted that Croke Park this year are actually taking the initiative of taking Dublin out of it. We’re going to bring them down the country even though we came in for a lot of criticism when we made the move.”