In ‘Unbeatable – Dublin’s Incredible Six in a Row’, Eric Haughan chronicles the Dubs’ trophy-laden 2,540-day run without defeat that changed Gaelic football forever.
Back on Top: 2015
2015 National League Division 1
Played 9, Won 6, Drew 1, Lost 2
Final position: League winners
The style of Dublin’s dismissal of Cork in the league final on 26 April 2015 – and Jim Gavin’s words afterwards – provide an insight into what had changed since September the previous year. “To keep Cork to such a low score from play was satisfying for the defence,” Gavin said after the 1-21 to 2-07 win. “And in attack, in the second half, to score 12 from 14 shots is a very good return for our forwards and probably a reflection of the work they are doing on the training field.”
It was the first hint of the efficient, streamlined, analytics-driven model we would bear witness to over the coming years. Dean Rock sent over ten points, three from play, but the Man of the Match award went to Jack McCaffrey, who was about to embark on a Footballer of the Year season that would see him, if not reinvent wing-back play, certainly take it to a whole new level.
The win/loss/draw columns may have looked identical, and the ultimate reward may have been the same, but the Dublin teams that secured National League titles in 2014 and 2015 were two very different entities altogether. Sure, the personnel hadn’t changed in any serious way. The man at the helm of it all, Jim Gavin, was as particular, focused and driven as ever. But on the pitch, there was an innocence missing. The joie de vivre that had been there in 2013 and 2014 as the Dubs run and gunned their way up and down pitches all over the country had been replaced by a still-dashing but certainly more pragmatic approach. Donegal had stolen that innocence and in doing so, had done Dublin a massive favour.
Gavin made some key moves within his playing reserves, most notably shifting Cian O’Sullivan to the holding centre-back position that he would make his own. We also saw Rock finally nail down the starting freetaker role. He had burst onto the scene during the 2013 league, coming off the bench in the final to kick two points from play as Dublin edged Tyrone 0-18 to 0-17 in a humdinger at Croke Park. Rock played in all five championship games during the 2014 campaign, but he started only the Leinster semi-final cakewalk against Wexford, a game in which he was upstaged by his half-time replacement, Cormac Costello, who came in and scored 1-05 from play.
By February 2015, however, Dean Rock was the man. He would go on to shatter Dublin scoring records over the next nine seasons, earning eight All-Ireland medals. Rock overtook the great Jimmy Keaveney as the capital’s leading marksman in 2020 and kept on scoring right up until his final act, stroking over the game-sealing free of the 2023 All-Ireland final against Kerry.
Rock’s career is a triumph of will and perseverance. “I was dropped off the panel in 2010, then tore my hamstring off the bone in 2011,” he told RTÉ Sport’s Des Cahill after announcing his retirement in January 2024. “In 2012 I managed to come back and had a really strong campaign with the DCU Sigerson Cup team, and Pat [Gilroy] actually asked me up to the senior panel then. I got a few league games, but that summer he dropped me again … That was a really hard call to take.”
Rock led Ballymun Kickhams to Leinster Club glory in the winter of 2012, a ride that took them all the way to the All-Ireland Club final, where they would be edged out by Roscommon blue bloods St Brigid’s by a single point, 2-11 to 2-10, on St Patrick’s Day. But by then, his name had been made. He top-scored in that season’s club championship and the fact that his Ballymun manager was Gavin’s 1995 All-Ireland-winning team-mate, Paul Curran, probably didn’t hurt either. “Jim got the [Dublin] job and it kind of snowballed ever since,” Rock said.
At the other end of the spectrum in 2015 was Alan Brogan. The Oliver Plunkett star had started all five championship games the previous year but been replaced in all of them. No shock. Brogan turned 33 in January of 2015 and had been leading the Dublin attack for over a decade. In what would turn out to be his final season in blue, he moved into the perfect impact-sub role, coming off the bench in all seven of Dublin’s championship games before, as Rock would do eight years later, firing over the final point of the game in the All-Ireland final. Upon Rock’s 2024 retirement, Brogan tweeted: “I recall a 19-year-old Dean Rock coming to me after a [training] session asking what he could do to improve. Fair to say my advice obviously worked.” A pair that will go down in Blue history.
In the 2014 and 2015 league seasons, Dublin finished with the same record: played nine, won six, drew one, lost two. They added their tenth and 11th National League titles with a convincing win over first Derry in 2014 (3-19 to 1-18) and the aforementioned 1-21 to 2-07 defeat of Cork a year later. But in many ways, that’s where the comparison ends. In their seven group matches in 2014, Dublin hit opponents for nine goals and 99 points yet conceded 8-94 at the other end. In nine total games, they shipped 11 goals altogether. Just 12 months later, post-Donegal, Dublin scored 7-93 in their seven group games but conceded a mere 2-78. A score difference of +30, compared to the +8 of the year before.
The Dubs’ eight goals – including Diarmuid Connolly’s strike in the final against Cork – were spread fairly evenly, with only Bernard Brogan accounting for more than one. Jason Sherlock, the darling of 1995, had been brought in as forwards’ coach. The two goals shipped against the Rebels in a league final which they still won comfortably doubled the amount they conceded in the whole competition. Dublin had tightened up. They wouldn’t be caught with their pants down again. And if they weren’t already, the rest of the country should have been gravely concerned.
‘Unbeatable – Dublin’s Incredible Six in a Row’ by Eric Haughan is published by The O’Brien Press and is in bookshops 7 October
