Paddy Andrews: Dessie Farrell staying could keep Dubs on board for another year

In July, their All-Ireland SFC victory over Kerry was interpreted as an encore, a last waltz. By now, we’d fully expected to have written up a couple of retirement statements.

Dean Rock said that very afternoon that his late free was “probably my last act playing for Dublin.”

James McCarthy, Mick Fitzsimons and Stephen Cluxton – not a man usually inclined towards sentiment – hung around the pitch for a long while after their ninth All-Ireland win. Joyous and celebratory though the evening naturally was, it all felt very end of days. It all fed the narrative.

There was even talk that Brian Fenton might take off in his camper van, that Davy Byrne was heading to Australia without a return date.

So far, not a word of any retirements.

Last weekend, the Dublin squad returned from their holiday. They will be presented with their latest All-Ireland medals in a couple of weeks. Then, presumably, the button will be pressed for 2024.

If the exodus is still to happen, you’d imagine it will be sometime soon. But the deeper into winter we go, the more than seems like an ‘if’ rather than ‘when’.

“I don’t know. I haven’t a clue. I don’t think anyone does really,” said Paddy Andrews, when asked at the launch of GAAGO’s 2024 Championship coverage.

We were inclined to believe him, too. The Dubs are close. But Paddy was working as an analyst for Off The Ball in Croke Park on the day Stephen Cluxton made his comeback and was just as shocked as everyone else in the ground.

“This might change in the next couple of weeks,” he acknowledged. “As we come up to Christmas, but it does look like those key players, the likes of Cluxton, Fitzsimons and James McCarthy, these guys who have a lot of miles on the clock that they are still committed to it.

“It’s great and fingers crossed we are sitting here in January as we kick into a National League campaign and all of those guys are still there.”

Fuelling hope of continuity is the retention of Dessie Farrell as manager.

“I think Dessie staying on was brilliant,” Andrews stressed. “He’s done four years. Obviously it was an All-Ireland final, there was a hell of a lot riding on it, and probably even more so in that regard for Dublin – are Kerry going to start that era of dominance which was the fear within Dublin GAA after the semi-final defeat in 2022.

“It felt like a monumental year for Dublin, the fact those guys came back, Pat Gilroy was obviously back involved.

“You did get the sense that from the outside looking at it – like, it’s great having 10-year plans and things like that – but it was 2023, we are here to do this now.

“And the assumption after that was, it was such a brilliant victory from a Dublin perspective – it is hard to get sweeter – you are beating Kerry in the All-Ireland final, that maybe some of these guys would step away.

“But ultimately within the dressing-room there is obviously a huge connection with the players, with the coaches, Dessie is massively, massively thought of within the group.”