Navel gazing: Dublin hurling's need to look inwards as progress stalls

On the 11 July 2015 something that would seem impossible now happened - Dublin knocked Limerick out of the All-Ireland hurling championship.

Since then, the Treaty men have gone on to claim five All-Ireland titles, and are looking to become the first senior county to do five in a row later on this year. They could write themselves into the history books as the greatest group of inter-county hurlers ever.

Dublin, on the other hand, have undoubtedly fallen back.

One trip to a Leinster final - with the squad greatly weakened by Covid 19 - in 2021 and some hard fought victories over Galway and Wexford are all they have to show for their efforts since.

But while the Tribesmen have managed to bring their Liam MacCarthy famine to an end since that July day in 2015, and themselves and Wexford have both lifted the Bob O'Keeffe Cup, Dublin's brief run of success - a league title in 2011, and a Leinster in 2013 - has stalled.

The fear amongst some in the county is that Dublin hurling is set to return to the level it was at near the start of the century following on from a real trimming against Clare in last year's All-Ireland quarter-final.

While still only early in the new season, their form in 2024 would not instil much confidence that anything is going to change when the Leinster Championship gets underway in five weeks.

The team were completely outclassed by Limerick at Croke Park, shipping an 18-point defeat. This led Neil McManus to wonder on the RTÉ GAA Podcast whether Micheál Donoghue might already be thinking about life after Dublin.

One might reasonably argue that John Kiely's side are hardly the team the Dubs should be measuring themselves against, but when you look at the narrow victory over Antrim - where a goalkeeping error