A defiant Niall Scully insists that Dublin can still contend strongly for an All-Ireland despite their first Leinster loss in 15 years.
Scully has already pored over the video of the Meath game - twice - and admits that there can be no complaint at the outcome.
There was a time when Dublin’s big provincial ties, win or lose, were a catalyst for a social spillover into Monday and perhaps beyond, but those days are long gone and Scully was in front of the laptop first thing the next morning as he sought answers in the wake of the four-point defeat in Portlaoise.
“I woke up and I was, obviously, disappointed,” he said. “I watched the game back on Monday morning and I don't think, as a team and as a collective, you can have any complaints from the performances of both sides on the day.
“Meath are a good side. We won the Sam Maguire from Division Two and they probably should have been promoted, just missed out promotion to Division One this year.
“They came with a game plan and they executed it. Down the last 10 minutes, we’d a lot of unforced turnovers and our execution was off.”
And it took two viewings for him to get the bottom of it all.
“Now, in fairness, I’d be more so looking at my own individual performance before I’d be looking elsewhere,” Scully explained, when speaking at SuperValu’s All-Ireland Championship launch in Cork.
He added: “But, the setbacks that we already had, we’ve been relegated to Division Two and won an All-Ireland from Division Two. We’ll treat this no differently than we would have treated that. We need to regroup and figure out what happened on the weekend and adjust to that accordingly.”
Meath’s win came not just in the context of a long losing streak to Dublin which stretched to nine Championship games, but the majority of them were comprehensive defeats. The average margin from 2012 on was 12 points and last year 16 points separated them in Croke Park.
“I always would have said, previously when we were playing Meath, that you would know that you’re playing them,” Scully explained. “Again, the scoreline might have said different but definitely over the last three or four years, I think the games have been a lot tighter and, like that, the physicality of them.
“They were always a big, physical group, so I definitely felt that at the weekend and they obviously targeted our kickouts and got a good bit of joy out of it. And, I suppose, if you’re not winning your kickouts, you have less of the ball and less plays for us to attack.”
Scully also poured cold water on the notion that Dublin would have won the game had it been played at Croke Park, with last Sunday’s game their first Championship meeting with Meath outside of GAA headquarters in 45 years.
“I’ve played a fair few seasons and we have gone through the ‘Super 8s’ and the new system where you are playing games outside Croke Park and for us and the supporters it is a huge experience.
“It is something that we kind of look forward to. I know my family love coming together and travelling to games like that. I don’t see that as something that we buy into, no.”
But while Dublin’s 14-year reign in Leinster is over, Scully doesn’t believe that it’s fatal to their All-Ireland chances.
“Not at all – again, it was hugely disappointing,” he said.
“We were hoping we would be in a Leinster final and win the Leinster series. But, again, we have to take it as it comes. We have dealt with blows previously and, as I said, we have come from Division Two and won the All-Ireland. We’d be hoping for something similar.”
Dublin’s loss came amid the absence of Sean Bugler, Luke Breathnach, Lee Gannon, Sean MacMahon, Eoin Murchan and Cian Murphy through injury and while Scully wasn’t using the casualty list as an excuse, the break to their opening group game on the weekend of May 17/18 at least gives them some breathing space.
“Yeah, there's a fair few. As a group, we’d 100% much prefer to be in a Leinster final, but we're not.
“So we'll have three or four weeks with the fit players to figure things out and three or four weeks for the lads that are injured to come back when they’re ready.”
And it’ll be a trip to face Connacht champions, Galway or Mayo, next up.
“That's an exciting prospect. A provincial winner in their venue is quite exciting.”
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