Central to Dublin’s success over the past decade or so has been that there is no such thing as a sure thing, we were repeatedly told.
It wasn’t altogether true, however, if you scanned over the team selection. Yes, there was a significant regeneration of the side from the start of the six-in-a-row run to its end but there were still pillars upon which the team was always going to be built on.
Stephen Cluxton in goal. Jonny Cooper, Jack McCaffrey and James McCarthy were always going to start when fit and available in defence. Brian Fenton, Ciaran Kilkenny and Dean Rock too, among others.
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Indeed, in his autobiography, Bernard Brogan described a meeting with Jim Gavin ahead of the 2019 Championship where the manager outlined how he had divided his panel into various tiers - five in all.
Tier one contained 12 players, a category Brogan had long since slipped out of by that stage.
“All fit and well, they’re automatic starters,” Gavin told him. “You know who they are.
“Then there’s the second tier, roughly numbers 13 to 21. They’d all likely be getting game time at some point if there was a Championship game tomorrow, it’d just be a matter of which of them would start and who’d be the finishers.”
Tier three contained the players who made up the rest of the matchday 26 and then Brogan was placed just outside of that in tier four. He managed to scramble back into tier three by the end of the campaign before retiring.
Back then, Niall Scully was unquestionably in Gavin’s top tier. After breaking into the side in 2017, he started 66 out of Dublin’s subsequent 73 League and Championship games and featured off the bench in another five, prior to this year’s Leinster quarter-final against Wexford.
In the 32 Championship games that Dublin played from 2017-22, he started 28 and came off the bench in another.
Of the three games he didn’t feature in, two of them were dead rubber ‘Super 8s’ games against Roscommon and Tyrone in 2018 and ‘19 respectively. In fact, after being introduced off the bench in the 2017 All-Ireland final win over Mayo, those were the only two Championship games that Scully didn’t start out of the subsequent 26, all the way up to last year’s All-Ireland semi-final loss to the same opposition.
We can’t say if current manager Dessie Farrell operates off the same tiered system as his predecessor but if he does, Scully is now firmly in tier two.
After starting all seven games in this year’s League as Dublin suffered relegation for the first time in 27 years, he has had to make do with coming off the bench against Wexford, Meath and Kildare in the Championship.
While acknowledging that it’s uncharted territory for him personally, the 28-year-old is trying to engineer a challenge from his current predicament.
“It's probably not a position I've faced before but it gives me something to look forward to every time I'm stepping out into training,” he says. “But definitely it kind of excites me more than it daunts me.
“In fairness over the League I suppose I probably got plenty (of game time), I got enough that was needed. For me, it's all about, and I know we always say it, but it's always about the team performance and how we can benefit the team the most.
“I suppose if it's in the starting 15 or if it's outside the starting 15, coming off the bench, whatever the case may be, it's just a big thing for me to benefit the team and try to introduce that.
“You’re always going to need that and that's down to an individual basis and understanding that and acknowledging it. Inter-county football now is a 35- or 40-man game. You need the competitiveness in the internal games and in every training session.”
The impact sub role is something that various Dublin players that would have been automatic selections elsewhere have had to live with over the years. Some of them have warmed to it better than others, particularly Kevin McManamon and Scully’s former Templeogue-Synge Street clubmate Eoghan O’Gara to a lesser degree.
Has Scully sought counsel from the likes of those on how best to execute the role?
“No, not really. I haven't thought of it in any further detail than when I'm coming in I'm trying to perform as good as I can.
“Again, like that, I haven't gone into any in depth detail around it, it's just about trying to put my hand up and my best foot forward.”
Incidentally, he has effectively been deposed by another clubmate, Lorcan O’Dell, who he has replaced in the last two games when the outcome has long been put beyond doubt.
“Ah look, I'd be the first one to put my hand up, I'm absolutely delighted for him and I think he's done extremely well over the last two games as well.
“For me, all I can do is go to training and put my hand up and put my best foot forward. I wouldn't be wishing that it's me or him or anything like that.”
If it’s not him against Cork tomorrow, it’ll be the first knockout game that Dublin will have started without him in five years.
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