AT THE time he thought they were mad. Getting out of bed at some unearthly hour, in the bitter depths of winter, to train on the freezing grounds of Dublin City University. Knowing they’d be going at it again that very same evening.

David Henry, over 10 years playing for the county, and current Dublin football captain, didn’t think he needed this.

And yet when Dublin lost heavily to Meath in the Leinster semi-final, those early morning sessions were still in the memory, and more importantly still in the body.

They’d worked too hard to give up – and indeed now, as Dublin head into an All-Ireland semi-final against Cork, all the hard work is finally paying off.

“Definitely, when we were beaten in Leinster, things could have gone either way,” says Henry. “Things can fall apart or you can pull them together a bit tighter and that’s what we did. We’d done a fair bit of hard training throughout the winter.

“When you have that work done, I suppose, you’re less likely to give in. We all knew that we worked very hard and we weren’t going to let it go at that stage. Other years maybe you wouldn’t really go that hard early on in the year.”

Those 7am training sessions were actually the source of some ridicule at the time, although Henry points out that they were the exception, not the rule.

“We didn’t do that many, but they’re still things that stick in your mind a little bit. When you know you’ve given that commitment and you’ve given that effort there’s no way you’ll just let that all go to waste.

“It did seem a bit mad at the time, a kind of unnatural thing to be up that early in the morning. But I think the bad weather in early January put a stop to a few of them, thank God. But we’d worked fairly hard, put a lot of time and effort into it. So the fact that we done that made us all say to each other, ‘what’s the point in having done all of that if we’re going to throw the towel in now?’ That was a help to us, yeah.

“But the draw was good for us as well. I suppose that got a bit of momentum going. We had a week’s break after the Meath match. Then we had Tipperary the following week. We would have felt that we could have beaten Tipperary. It was a good draw for us. Then the Armagh game came along and that was probably the challenge we needed at that time.

“To get over that I suppose added an extra bit of confidence to the whole team and we got a bit of momentum. The Louth game was a kind of a nice game as well because all of the talk about Louth. It set us up nicely for Tyrone. With each game a little bit of confidence built within us.”

In fact, by beating Tyrone – as in one of the so-called bigger counties – Dublin may well have gained enough confidence to beat Cork, provided they improve once again.

“Yeah, to beat one of them was very satisfying,” agrees Henry. “The last couple of years, while we felt we were going very well coming into the Tyrone and Kerry games, well you know, they were devastating defeats. It was just so important for us to perform against them.

“But Cork are a step up again. At the start of the year if you were to ask people who the best team in Ireland are, despite the fact that Kerry were after winning the All-Ireland, you might have said Cork. Certainly, with the athleticism that they have, and the physique.

“And they’re all extremely comfortable on the ball as well. But we’ve worked fairly hard as a team in the last few games and we’re going to have to up that if we’re going to compete against them.”

Pitching in: Extra tickets go on sale

The 2,000 pitch-side seats in Croke Park, that were initially not put on sale due to security measures, have been made available due to the massive demand ahead of Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final between Cork and Dublin, writes Gavin Cummiskey.

In previous games this season, in an attempt to avoid pitch invasions, orange plastic meshing has covered the first three rows of the Hogan, Cusack and Davin stands, but the GAA are now expecting something close to 82,300 capacity.

Hill 16 is already sold out while some tickets are available in the Nally Stand and other pockets around the ground.

They can be purchased on ticketmaster.ie, gaa.ie or the Croke Park ticket office.

Sunday is the last match before a 2.8-metre barrier will at tbe erected in front of Hill 16 ahead of the second football semi-final between Kildare and Down, and the hurling and football All-Ireland finals next month.