Early days but Dublin can doubly benefit from return of McCaffrey and Mannion

It may take getting used to but the idea that there are no prizes given out in September is relevant to the news of Dublin’s windfall reacquisition of Jack McCaffrey and Paul Mannion.

The low-key utterance by manager Dessie Farrell that the pair had declared themselves willing to return sent a power surge through the hibernating intercounty game. It’s not the first time that Dubs TV has functioned as Pravda and the management had obviously decided ‘to get out in front’ of the news, as it began to leak out through the county’s GAA community.

Even the phraseology and presentation was to bury the revelation down the interview and place it in the context of annual comings and goings.

“We are very interested at identifying some new players. We have had a lot of new players come into the squad over the last two years and that process continues. Good news is we’ll have Jack McCaffrey and Paul Mannion rejoining the squad next year so that will be a great help to us in terms of the development and continuous evolution of the team and the squad,”

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Both players have proved single-minded and career-oriented and have each previously taken sabbaticals from county involvement.

Undoubtedly, the prospect of McCaffrey and Mannion being reintegrated with the team has moved the dial on next season. There had been enough excitement, tinged with disappointment, at the narrow defeat by Kerry in a match that leading forward Con O’Callaghan missed.

Now, factor in the return of Mannion, who for various reasons was the most talked about footballer in last year’s club competitions and McCaffrey, a former Footballer of the Year and a player who raises the temperature nearly every time he gets the ball, and it becomes impossible to see that one-point margin surviving.

If only everything were that linear. Next season is still a long way off and both players have been missing from the intercounty scene for a long time. McCaffrey’s extraordinary pace has been a primary asset in what was a remarkable career. Will he be able to regenerate that after what will be nearly three-and-a-half years’ absence from the big stage?

Neither is that the main concern – after all, his pace survived the 2017 cruciate injury lay-off. Expanding on his decision to quit the intercounty game in 2020, in an interview with the Bernard Brogan podcast on Off the Ball, the 2015 FOTY said that he had found it harder and harder in 2019, Dublin’s record breaking five-in-a-row season, to enjoy the involvement.

He added that that year’s All-Ireland final against Kerry, in which he played exceptionally well and scored 1-3 from play, had been the point of no return.

What changed the minds of both players? It’s hard to imagine that Farrell was able to come up with reasons to return that they hadn’t heard over the past couple of years.

“I think what broke me was the drawn final. You just build everything to this game and it went quite well on a personal level. Obviously we didn’t win, we didn’t lose, thank God, but I was walking up to the ref, I thought there was extra-time and David Moran just stuck his hand out to shake my hand and I was just like, ‘We don’t have to do this again, do we?’”

The replay didn’t go so well and he got injured and replaced. Apart from a few league minutes under the new management of his underage mentor Dessie Farrell, there wasn’t much to the following season before Covid struck. It was during the lockdown period in June 2020 that McCaffrey announced his departure from the panel.

There hasn’t been anything like the same pressure on him as there has been on Mannion, because his disengagement always appeared likely to be more permanent given his demanding medical career, but also because he simply wasn’t in the spotlight as much.

Farrell, persecuted for much of 2021 by questions about former captain Stephen Cluxton’s potential return, also had to endure the consistent pressure of Mannion’s major contribution to Kilmacud Crokes’ Dublin title success last year, even if the player himself was firmly insistent that he had no plans to return to Dublin colours.

His effortless kicking of long-range points provided a painful counterpoint to Dublin’s labouring campaign, which ended in relegation to Division Two, although injury had by then curtailed his club season and probably cost Kilmacud the All-Ireland title.

After another injury on Saturday in the county quarter-final against Cuala, since said to be not serious, a further question arises about the player’s injury proneness. He has had a stellar career but, equally, has been hard at it over the past 10 years even allowing for sabbaticals.

What changed the minds of both players? It’s hard to imagine that Farrell was able to come up with reasons to return that they hadn’t heard over the past couple of years.

They are quite friendly off the field and are likely to have discussed the matter, and there may also have been interaction with former team-mates to the effect of getting the band back together for one more tour.

Whatever the reason, their return will have a powerful knock-on effect. Players considering their position whether in light of retirement or their own sabbaticals, will be encouraged to persevere.

It has been suggested that it also makes a call to Eric Lowndes more possible given the improvement in prospects. He moved away to Dubai over a year ago and was a significant loss to the panel.

That’s the biggest impact. As well as the unarguable benefit to Dublin’s playing potential, the weekend’s news also has positive implications for how the county is perceived not only by rivals and but also by themselves.