LOCKER ROOM:Cork won and came away with as many headaches as grins. Dublin lost and can hardly wait for next year

THERE IS no good way to lose an All-Ireland semi-final, yet while Dublin will look back with regret on yesterday’s missed opportunity there can be no complaints and a lot of optimism. Dublin improved as the year went on. They could claim to have played perhaps the better football yesterday. They lost the game through reckless inexperience, but they finish the year as All-Ireland Under-21 champions and with Bernard Brogan having made the step up into the elite of forwards.

It’s better than that. They have a manager with cojones as well as brains. Pat Gilroy might have been lynched at any given hour on the days Dublin played Wexford and Meath, but he knew where he was going, stuck to the plan and ended up with a team that is young, which believes in him and which looks to have the character and intelligence to keep developing. His Dubs brought the crowds back to Croker yesterday. That’s not a bad year’s work.

The achievements is best viewed in terms of personnel. A new full-back line was installed and adhered to. Barry Cahill is the only one of the old half-back contingent getting regular game time. In midfield, Michael Dara Macauley is a major discovery. Beside him, Ross McConnell, despite the expensive rawness of his tackling technique, has made made a quantum leap in terms of the maturity of his contribution.

Two of the guys who came off as celebrities for the last few years have been reprogrammed for the better. Bryan Cullen looked as if he would never quite reach his potential but this year his workrate and his brain have been in synch and you could see his contribution becoming gradually less stylised but equally more effective. He bought into doing a lot of the donkey work, the digging and the scrapping. He is a better player for it.

Alan Brogan must have been equally hard to convince. He has been a frustrating player to watch for some years. Full of talent but looking like a man who has grown up used to winning matches on his own. He’d take the ball and have no thought other than scoring. When his brother Bernard appeared on the scene his second option might be to pass to Bernard.

This year, though, he has been an all-running, all-passing centre forward, and again Dublin have benefited hugely. People have said he is slightly off his game because he is not popping up in the same slots for scoring, but the amount of ball he has worked and processed has been phenomenal.

Dublin have yearned for a cerebral but hard-working centre forward for some time. Few of us thought it would be Alan Brogan despite his regular appearances in the number 11 jersey. Now approaching his prime as a player, he appears to have found a niche which suits him perfectly.

If you have been watching the club scene in Dublin for a few years it will be no revelation that Bernard Brogan can actually win matches on his own. He has been doing that on and off for Plunketts for a few years, and that he has made the step up to doing it at the highest level seems right and proper. He is a natural shooter and some of the scores he has chalked up this summer have been phenomenal.

Beside him, Eoghan O’Gara isn’t a natural shooter but he is a discovery. He popped a couple of wides yesterday even when he had taken a look at the posts and steadied himself, and possibly he stayed on the field a little too long. But, again, he surprised with his ball-winning abilities, his gameness and his unpredictability. A few months work on his technique and he should come back next summer with the potential to make a far bigger impact on the scoreboard.

And that’s what makes yesterday’s semi-final defeat a little easier to swallow. There should be a next summer for the Dubs. The wilderness won’t be reclaiming them for another while yet. The county has fine players coming through from this year’s under-21 panel and it takes just one or two to make the breakthrough during the league for Dublin to move that much nearer to being the finished article.

What is needed? Not too much. Cian O’Sullivan should be in full fettle next year and Dublin look better when he is motoring well. Hugh Gill and Paul Conlon will push hard for places in defence also, but the team probably needs another midfield option. Eamonn Fennell’s club limbo isn’t going to improve him and he seems to find the fast turf of summer not too much to his liking. Darren Magee shipped a bad injury recently. The Smart Boy Wanted poster will be in the window for a while yet.

And certainly Dublin need another scoring threat. Bernard Brogan should take home at least one of the player-of-the-year awards on offer at season’s end and the price will be even tighter marking next summer (although Cork allowed him surprising latitude).

O’Gara will improve and Alan Brogan will continue to develop in the centre-forward role.

Dublin just need a little more scoring out of the jerseys occupied by Niall Corkery, Bryan Cullen and David Henry. Pat Gilroy will be asking Santa for a Dooher this Christmas: somebody who can do all the trekking back and turning over of possession and still throw in two or three points. Santa will be telling Pat to get in the queue.

Dublin will need to evolve. The high-energy style of play worked well and they got better at it as the summer unwound. Next year is different terrain. The players are a year older and a year more experienced. They need to be a little more surprising, a little more inventive.

It doesn’t always follow that a team which has a good year such as the one Dublin enjoyed this summer push on the following year. Ask Wexford and Meath. When it doesn’t happen the key mistake is failing to evolve. The game keeps moving on and changing and the biggest crime is standing still, expecting the opportunity to come around to you again.

A lot was said yesterday about the cumulative effect of all the bad experiences which Cork have had in semi-finals and finals over the last six years, and perhaps when it came to the endgame we didn’t see Dublin panic so much as we saw Cork refusing to lose one more time.

For some of this Dublin team, though, this was a third All-Ireland semi-final defeat in five years. Not only is there no All-Ireland medallist playing football for the county there isn’t even a player who has appeared in an All-Ireland final. The hunger must be there to push on.

As for Cork, there will be plenty of time to write about them in the coming weeks and to figure out why they play within themselves so much. Given some of the performances they have delivered in recent years they could win this All-Ireland without playing particularly well in virtually any of their games. They won yesterday and came away with as many headaches as grins. Dublin lost and can hardly wait for next year to swing around. That’s sport.