Maiden winners last year, the Mobhi Road club will be contesting a fourth successive final under Ó Ceallacháin tomorrow week, a run of form that has helped catapult him into inter-county management.
“Obviously it’s fairly hectic at the moment,” he admitted when speaking at the launch of a new alternate county jersey in Parnell Park. “It’s a great challenge to have, these weeks, just to be looking forward to a county final at club level. In the background, we’re kind of putting stuff together and looking forward from a county perspective from 2025. It’s what you love and what you want to be doing, so that makes it easier.
“The focus is the club. We were never in a county final up to four years ago and now we’re in our fourth in a row. That’s the focus for the next 10 days or so. There’s a bit of stuff in the background being set up with Dublin and things like that. But I have a lot of support there to make that more manageable.”
Ó Ceallacháin is the first Dubliner to manage the senior county side since Tommy Naughton in the 1990s, aside from the one-year residency of Pat Gilroy in 2018. Naughton helped steady Dublin after some difficult years before clearing the way for the arrival of Anthony Daly, leading to a spell of prosperity that culminated in a Leinster title win 11 years ago.
Ó Ceallacháin was part of the first Dublin development squad at U-14 along with future senior hurlers like David ‘Dotsy’ O’Callaghan, Derek O’Reilly and Gary Maguire, and acknowledged the positive changes over the last 25 years that has made the county competitive – if not always consistent – at minor, U-20 and senior.
“The senior hurling team in Dublin, along with the minor and U-20s, are competing on a regular basis. The next level is where we are regularly competing on a consistent basis to win Leinster and All-Irelands and National Leagues. And that’s where we need to go.”
He said there was no conclusive talk of retirement or players declaring themselves unavailable.
“In general, the response has been really, really positive is what I’d say. I made it clear to everybody that we’re going to need everybody.”
Dublin’s form since winning Leinster in 2013 has been erratic. He was asked what had prompted him to dive in, mindful of the size of the undertaking.
“The simple thing from my perspective is that with anything in life, when you care about something as much as you do, it makes it much easier to put the effort, time, focus, headspace and everything into something when you genuinely want to actually commit to something. It makes that easier. Like anything in life, there are different factors involved but that would be the main driver.”
A long interest in Dublin hurling fuelled his ambition to manage when the opportunity arose.
“I’ve been in Na Fianna since I was seven years old and that imbues a certain love for the games. I’m a proud man from Dublin who very much cares about how the Dublin senior team is basically doing. And there’s a high level of motivation there to try and lead and drive that to where it can be.
“That’s where that comes from. I wouldn’t have any interest in doing any other county. I wouldn’t put the time, effort, head space, everything into something that’s needed here that you don’t absolutely love to the core.”
Dublin, like all county teams, can resume training on December 7 but won’t have any pre-season competitions ahead of the National League.
“It’s not my job to make these decisions. I understand the drivers for it,” said Ó Ceallacháin. “The fixture calendar is extremely challenging. There are lots of challenges there and, to be fair to the people involved, there are a lot of things that have tried to be done to help with that. This is now one of them.
“From an inter-county management perspective, they [pre-season competitions] would have been important in the month of January in order to see players. They would often have been used for that purpose. I think it’s doable, to be honest, but we’ll just get on with it. What you’ll end up seeing is a lot of high-level inter-county challenge games over the course of those three weekends before the league starts on January 26, 27.”
