When there is talk of Dublin's panel strength, Darren Daly is the sort of player in focus. An adaptable defender who can slot into most positions at the back, he's generally there or thereabouts, starting or being named to start: different things in the arcane protocols of the team announcements.
He was a panellist in the 2011 All-Ireland winning season before making his debut in Jim Gavin's first senior championship match as manager, the 2013 Leinster quarter-final against Westmeath.
His inter-county stash is already impressive: two All-Irelands, three national leagues and five Leinsters, not counting his previous career in junior and intermediate football, winning an All-Ireland junior with Dublin in 2008 and reaching the club intermediate final that year with Fingal Ravens.
He believes that those experiences helped greatly with his future career.“I always had it in the back of my head, try and get into the senior team,” he says, recalling that success seven years ago. “I knew there was a chance of a stepping stone of trying to get onto the senior team. If you performed at that level – it was a high enough level at the time – you knew you were being watched, so that’s what gave a lot of us the opportunity in the senior team.
Exceptional
"When you go back and look at it, you had Denis [Bastick], you had Eoghan O'Gara, Mick Fitzsimons, myself, Jonny Cooper, probably one or two more. We were all in the junior set-up at the time and are in the seniors now.
“It was an exceptional year . . . just a good year where we got a lot of lads. We played two or three games in Croke Park and it was great experience to get that feel before getting into the senior team. We played it as a curtain raiser for the seniors and got a bit of a taste of it then. You knew you wanted to be there then.”
Daly started last month's Leinster quarter-final against Longford, coincidentally managed by former Dublin player Jack Sheedy, who was part of Mick Deegan's management in the 2008 junior All-Ireland win.
The match ended in such annihilation for Longford it triggered a nationwide, existential crisis on the nature of the championship and its inherent inequalities. Naturally, for the players involved it was just a first match in the championship.
“Listen, you take every game as the same level, we prepare for every team the same. Obviously we won convincingly, we will still look back and there are always things we can improve on.
“We’ll go back through it and I’m sure we’ll pick things out we are going improve on. You have to; you have to keep on improving. Longford had a spell there in the first half where they kicked five points in a row I think. That’s something we can improve on.”
He sounds a bit weary when one of the many proposals to level the playing field is put to him: that of advancing Dublin to Leinster semi-finals so that they play only the top teams in the province.
“It’s completely out of the players’ control. If they do that, fair enough, but we just keep playing along anyway – it’s not something we can control.
“You want to play as many games as possible coming into the later end of the season; you are learning from every game and the more games the more you are going to improve, the more you are going to learn.”
The next module is up on Sunday in Croke Park against Kildare.
