By John Harrington

One year after rupturing his cruciate four minutes in the 2017 All-Ireland SFC Final, Jack McCaffrey laid that ghost to rest by producing a Man of the Match performance as Dublin defeated Tyrone in Sunday's All-Ireland Final.

Yesterday morning in the Gibson Hotel he was still buzzing after the victory when he sat down with the assembled online and print media.

In a lengthy and candid interview, he explained why Sunday’s win meant so much to him and his family, why humility is this Dublin team’s biggest strength, and why their run of success won’t last forever.

Q: Jack, is this your most satisfying All-Ireland Final win because of the injury you've had to overcome to get back to this level?

A: Yeah, this was the first time I've been on the pitch when the final whistle blew in an All-Ireland Final. Incredible. It was so satisfying, such a relief.

You touched on the injury last year and stuff, so going out yesterday it wasn't about getting forward and kicking scores. I just wanted to work as hard as I possibly could. For me, you see Cian (O'Sullivan) go off injured early on. The lads got me out of jail last year and, you know, pulled me over the line when I couldn't go out and do it myself. To be able to do that for a team-mate this year was really, really special.

Q: Yesterday's performance proves you're back to your very best level. Did you ever doubt you would be?

A: Yeah, well, there's always room for improvement. There were definitely some times when you thought things weren't clicking as easily as I would have liked them to.

There's a great bunch of lads here and a number of them have done serious injuries and I could always bounce ideas off them. It was a great tool for me to use. The message I was getting from management was to just keep at it and it would come good at some point and, thankfully, it did and I was able to do my bit yesterday.

Q: There was a nice photo taken of you and your father after the final whistle.

A: Yeah, he's been a bag of nerves for the last couple of days. If anyone wasn't underestimating Tyrone it was the McCaffrey household. He has just been all over the place.

Every year it seems that an All-Ireland Final brings a slightly different dynamic to it. And this year, I finished training on Tuesday and I got a call from Dad asking did I get hurt, was I fine, was I alright?

I think he was so relieved and happy that I just lasted the game. And obviously that the result fell the way it did. He's the first man I look for as soon as the final whistle blows.

I've photos with him after every All-Ireland Final we've won. It was really special to be able to find him.

Q: You knew where he'd be sitting?

A: Roughly, yeah. There's a family section there that you'd spend 10 or 15 minutes looking up to try to find them. He always makes his way down to the front.

Q: Was he a lot more nervous before this Final than the other ones?

A: I think so, yeah. I think so. We were under no illusions as to the threat that Tyrone posed. I think we really subscribe to not playing attention to the media stuff in the build-up but it always seeps in, in some little shape or form, that the narrative out there was that we were heavy favourites, that Tyrone were big underdogs.

This is a team who missed a free-kick to bring it to one point up in Omagh with three or four minutes left. A team who would feel themselves, I'm sure, that they didn't do themselves justice last year in an All-Ireland semi-final. And a team that's pretty well set up to have a real cut off us.

It was set up so perfectly for them to do us, basically, that I think there was definitely an extra bit of bite coming into it.

Q: Is your father the biggest influence in your football life as well as life in general?

A: Ah yeah, himself and Mam, obviously, would be massive. He's the football guy. Yeah, he's always a good man to bounce ideas off. He has a couple of different ideas to other people so it's important to strike that balance between listening to everything he says and ignoring the stuff that has to be ignored as well. We're figuring it out.

Q: What was the message he was giving you about Tyrone?

A: Basically what I was hearing every day was that this was this Dublin team's biggest ever challenge. And I agree with him, to be honest.

The last time I remember coming into a game as hot as that was Donegal in 2014 when everyone was saying, 'Jesus, this team is unbeatable'.

It's so, so dangerous. So I think it was a real credit to the group this year that even though all of that was going on, we were on the money. We didn't let that seep into us at all.

Q: In that context, was this the most satisfying All-Ireland win and season yet for this Dublin team?

A: Yeah, to be honest I haven't yet taken a step back and looked at it in the context of the season quite yet. But from my point of view personally, it's incredibly satisfying to transition from watching in the stands throughout the League and early parts of the Championship to being down on the field.

I think everybody really stepped up and maybe did what they had to do as oppposed to...look at lads like Paul Mannion who would love to be kicking 2-3 a game standing up in the full-forward line and waiting for easy ball to come to him.

He's turning over Tyrone players in our full-back line on two occasions yesterday. I think the collective bond and the collective work-ethic that we've had has really come to the fore this year and, if anything, we've become even tighter.

I don't have an answer to your question, but over the next couple of days I'll look back on it. At the moment it's very satisfying, anyway.

Q: Bernard Brogan suffered the same injury as you did (ruptured cruciate ligament). What impact on the group did it have, watching Bernard make the strides that he did as he tried to make it back?

A: And he made it in fairness to him, he got back. He just ran out of time unfortunately. If the All-Ireland final had been on the weekend it traditionally is he would have had another two weeks of football under him and he could have been in the mix.

But I was chatting to Bernard yesterday and for me, Bernard Brogan made the transition from an excellent Dublin footballer to a Dublin legend over the last season because he was given the easy out.

A man who has won absolutely everything, such a silky footballer, such a once in a generation player and to have an injury happen at his age and the point that he’s at in his life, children and his business and everything, no one would have begrudged him if he said, ‘I’m off’.

But to have him around the dressing room…over the last week maybe he realised that he’d just run out of grass but he was…it’s just not something you would associate with that full-forward footballer, he was a selfless bloke, he was chatting to the younger lads and he’s the kind of man that he doesn’t talk often when we have meetings but when he talks everybody listens because it’s something that’s worth saying.

I had massive respect for him already but I absolutely love that man now and I cannot put into words how somebody who just didn’t have to go the extra yard and he’s set such a standard now for the rest of us to live up to.

Q: The physical toll involved in a rehab like that...your schedule was slightly more relaxed...physically, what did he have to do? It must have consumed his whole life from when he picked up that injury to get back so quickly?

A: Yeah, now he’s not the kind of fella who’d be coming into training, ‘Jesus lads, I’m after doing this, this and this’. He kept the hard work he was doing in the background but he would have had a slightly different operation to mine with a view to getting back quicker. A different technique.

He gave himself every chance and I remember the first time seeing him running, I couldn’t walk at that point in my recovery and he was running up and down. So, look, I’m not going to speak for Bernard, I can only see that it’s been incredibly tough for him but he’s done a remarkable job, a remarkable job and I hope he’s around for a couple more years.

Q: Your own performance yesterday, do you think that was one of your better ones for Dublin?

A: I think yesterday I figured out I’m actually a defender as opposed to some loose attacking player. I left the shooting boots at home unfortunately. I really enjoyed it and to get a turnover in the injury time period of an All-Ireland final and to feel the momentum shift around that was something I haven’t experienced before.

It gave me immense satisfaction. I’d have to say that’s one of the best performances that I’ve ever put in.

Q: In the back of your head, are you thinking you need to make up for last year?

A: Yeah, in the lead up to the game, 100%, 100%. We spoke as a group on the Friday before the game and I was going to work so hard and do everything I could because this time last year I felt I was on the cusp of a really good performance.

I felt that I was on the money and it was taken away from me unfortunately. There was a bit of a moment when the clock ticked past five minutes that I said, ‘Right, bonus territory now, we’re in the money’. Yeah, there are these kind of gaps in play, obviously you’re caught up in the match so much but there are these gaps when there’s someone down injured or whatever in the second half where you kind of take stock of things versus last year.

So much of my game yesterday was just trodding up and down the pitch to create space. It wasn’t flashy, it was just ‘do it’. It was a real source of inspiration for me. Who am I to not making a 20-metre run? Because his time last year I wasn’t able to, so you just do the extra little bit.

Q: Do you think you've become a better defender this year?

A: Yeah, to be honest, I never felt I was a particularly bad defender. It’s something that the narrative with me has been that I’m one of Dublin’s attacking weapons and can do my defensive duties but maybe don’t excel in them as much as other lads and I still probably wouldn’t be man-marking guys like Jonny Cooper or Philly McMahon. It’s something I need to improve on.

Dec Darcy is our defenders’ coach and the discipline in kind of getting in tackles and sometimes not seeking contact and to be able to turn over a player like Mattie Donnelly, one of Tyrone’s key, key massive runners and not an easy man to tackle by any stretch of the imagination, that for me, was an exceptional high to get towards the end of the game.

I do think I’ve improved on it. I’ve improved on a lot of things. I think as a group we’re always kind of improving. It is an area I can still get better at but I think, well I hope, that at this point that people are starting to figure out that I’m not just there to go the other way. I can hold my own.

Q: It sounds like you got as big a buzz out of that moment as anything else?

A: Yeah, I did like. It’s great to turn a perceived weakness into a strength and I’ve seen it in games over the last number of years that teams will get the ball and can see that I’m eyeing them up and, ‘Oh it’s McCaffrey, I’ll just go at him, he can’t tackle', and to be able to invite that on and then turn them over is great.

Similar with kickouts or whatever, I’d probably be targeted a bit but I’m holding my own this year. I’ve been around five or six years at this point.

It’s not enough to just want to keep playing to your strengths, you’ve to take the other side of things and improve them so it was great and I got very lucky after that turnover, I just hoofed the ball out and it went straight to Cormac Costello so that was awesome nice. It could have gone very badly.

Q: Do you think that's a perceived weakness? That teams have targeted your tackling?

A: Yeah, 100 percent. You can hear lads talking about it on the pitch. Like, they get the ball, they are, ‘go on, got at him, go at him, go at him.' Now, not so much any more, but probably when I was a bit younger and a bit more naive. Yeah, definitely.

Q: You would have dived in more in the past?

A: I was a horrific tackler. I was weak, small enough. Relying on my pace to kind of recover when I lost men or whatever. You

know, tackling is, we have some of the best tacklers in the country. You look at Jonny Cooper and his technique is incredible. It’s not just as simple as running into a fella with the ball as we all know, and trying to get in the way. There is a bit more too it than that. It was something I wasn’t very good at, and I’d like to think I’ve got significantly better at it.

Q: You were one of nine players in the starting XV who were aged 25 or younger. Another two in that age-bracket came off the bench. When you look at that age-profile, should this team still have further room for improvement?

A: “Yeah, just a little aside on that, sorry. There were five lads who started yesterday that were born in ‘93 and played football together growing up. Myself, Paul Mannion, John Small, Brian Fenton and Ciaran Kilkenny. That’s something that I take immense pride in, because we were coached by Dessie Farrell coming up. My father was involved as well.

When you take a little step back it’s kind of great to be able to see his fingerprints on a lot of what has gone on. It’s something that is really special for all of us.

Q: That generation lost an All-Ireland Minor Football Final against Tipperary. Was that a big moment for that group in terms of firing you up to go on and do what you've done together since?

**A:**It definitely was. It’s funny we are sitting here now the morning after winning an All-Ireland and when you look back on your achievements to date, it’s kind of the losses that stick out a little bit. I look back on that loss to Tipperary in 2011, losing to Longford in under-21s in 2013. Losing to Donegal in 2014 is obviously the one that’s wheeled out to talk about the whole time. Then a Freshers All-Ireland final we lost to DCU with UCD.

It’s funny, maybe it’s something about the nature of athletes, or me or whatever, it’s always something you look back on. You feel like you have left some stuff behind you even though you have collected a fair bit in the meantime.

Just in terms of building on it and improving and stuff, to see a man like Brian Howard rise up in the 75th minute and catch a ball on the edge of the square, it’s one of those moments in Croke Park that I will remember forever.

Sometimes in games, you are removed from it and you are ‘wow, that was exceptional,’ and it’s the kind of thing if it happened to me I would have gone up and tried to break it, or I would have let a Tyrone man to catch it and tried to tackle him.

Brian is a young man, full of confidence, and should be after the year he has had, and he is, ‘you know what, I can catch that ball, I am going to go up and I am going to catch it, and whoever is going to stop me, best of luck to them.’

And himself and Eoin Murchan, see what Niall Scully did this year. Niall has had such a difficult couple of years trying to break into this team and to score whatever number of goals he has scored this year, and to nail down a starting position.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was the young guy bringing the youthful exuberance or whatever. But, there is always someone else bringing it now. It definitely drives us on and hopefully it will continue.

Q: Have you ever timed yourself over 100 metres?

A: No, I haven’t. I did it for 20 metre (for an AFL trial), way back when. I’ve never done 100 metres. I’d actually love to do one of those 40 yard dashes AFL players do, because obviously those guys are sick, sick athletes. I would be nice to measure yourself against them.

No, is the short answer to that question. I’ll do it for you. We’ll do it now outside the Gibson!

Q: When are you back on duty with work?

A: I’m off until Friday. My current job is with the Paediatric team working in our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda. I do call, but it’s very flexible. It’s suited football very well.

At this point, in five weeks maybe I’ll rotate to the cardiology team, where things get a little bit more hectic. I absolutely love it. There’s a great team up there.

A huge percentage of the team are foreign nationals, who have no concept of Gaelic football but have kind of come to realise there is something going on that they should maybe be a bit excited about but they have no gauge of whether to be really excited about game X or game Y and the support there has been fantastic. It’s been a great buzz for the last couple of weeks.

Q: Are you fully qualified now?

A: Yeah, qualified, out the gap. You do the intern year then apply for jobs. I'm pretty confident I will go for a paedeatric scheme at this point. Have to get my ducks in order in terms of applying for things there but absolutely loving it, the kids are fantastic, it's a really nice working environment.

Q: Will it get tougher for you to mix a medical career with sport? Traditionally that's the case for those in your position in the past?

A: I'm sure it will. At the moment I'm working half-eight to five, relatively set hours. It will definitely be a bit more up in the air. The nature of medicine and probably one of its big failings is that you really don't know what job you are walking into until two or three weeks beforehand so it will definitely become more difficult but how difficult I don't know, you're basically walking into the job.

But there is a fantastic camaraderie within medicine that mirrors...that I find amusing because I have seen it in a sporting context so often but the nature of medicine is that you work with a close-knit team for long periods of time.

There is a very similar culture to what you find in a dressing-room in my experience and everyone covers for each other and helps each other so I think as long as I want to play football it will be catered for and people will have your back which is something I really appreciate.

Q: Is it difficult not to take that work home with you or to take it with you into a football environment?

A: It's a really humbling space to be in. When I'm at work I'm chasing down scans, doing various bits and bobs and there is no point where I am making a life-saving intervention or anything.

If I wasn't there everyone would tip along just as well but you do get to experience some families that are in incredibly tough times. We went to visit a young man on Monday, myself and a few of the lads, who is passing away, an 18-year-old fella, to know that he is going to be sitting there with a Dublin jersey on cheering you on, rather than diminishing what football is because of how trivial it is, it just makes you appreciate it so much, the release it gives people the joy that people get from watching us play football, it just, it's kind of mind-blowing when you sit down and think about it.

Q: As a group this Dublin panel of players seems to be very humble despite all you've achieved together.

A: I agree, it's one of our absolutely key strengths that we don't get ahead of ourselves. There are so many arguments out there about Dublin football and the stuff we have done and the last couple of years with funding but I would challenge anyone to take a look at our group and have a cut off us.

I think...obviously when we cross the white line we'll kill you, no two ways about it, we'll do whatever it takes to win but outside a football context, I'm looking over here now at Brian Fenton taking photos with lads, I'm looking at some people getting together to go visit the children's hospital and it's something I take great pride in.

I know someone who came up to me and said, 'I met Philly McMahon at a charity thing', and Philly never said it to me, never said it at training that he was off doing this, but he was there. The same can be said from No 1 through the 30, it's something we really try not to lose sight of. It's something really special for us and something we've stayed in touch with us.

Q: Do you find it offending when people talk about funding, money, and that term 'financial doping'. Is it insulting in some ways?

A: No, I think there is probably an argument there. Things may have been a bit disproportionate over the last while but, on the flip side of things, from what I have seen going on and I alluded to it earlier with my father coaching the 1993 lads, he wasn't bringing home a pay cheque or anything.

I think that this group of players that we have at the moment have come ahead of the funding...I stand open to correction on that...I don't think we have got anything that anyone else doesn't get. I think the GAA has a myriad of issues that can deal with every off-season and being fair to everyone is first and foremost on our list.

It's not something that insults us. There is a lot of stuff said in the media, sometimes just lads trying to get a bit of a rise or whatever. We don't pay much heed to it. I think when everyone sits down and has a think about it, there are not many lads who look at us playing football and say 'Jesus the Dubs they've got so much money, it's not fair'.

I think people at this point are just starting to enjoy what we do and appreciate that. I'm incredibly lucky to put on a Dublin jersey alongside some of the best Dublin footballers of all time, some of the best footballers ever to play for Dublin.

If I had come along and they hadn't I'd be soldiering away struggling and being beaten. Nobody is labouring under the illusion that this is something to continue indefinitely.

This is a really special group of people and we're going to make hay while the sun is shining.