O’Dwyer draws inspiration from footballers

Watching Dublin win the All-Ireland football title on Sunday, Ryan O’Dwyer realised he had been completely and utterly indoctrinated into the Dublin GAA faith.

O’Dwyer, from Cashel in Tipperary, was in Croke Park with a few of his Dublin hurling team-mates and shouted himself hoarse, urging his footballing counterparts over the line in an epic final defeat of Kerry.

A talented footballer who made the grade with the Tipperary Minor team in 2004, O’Dwyer’s allegiances now firmly lie in the capital and with the small ball game.

Amid the wild celebrations that followed Dublin’s first All-Ireland win in 16 years, the Kilmacud Crokes clubman resolved that he would do everything in his power to ensure he would experience that same winning feeling with the hurlers.

“I just felt so proud to be associated with Dublin GAA last Sunday,” said O'Dwyer, who was speaking at the Croke Park Hotel and Croke Park Conference Centre GAA Club Support Programme launch on Tuesday .

“I went down to the sideline afterwards. I saw the joy on Kevin McManamon’s face. Paul Flynn too. The joy in their faces.

“It’s definitely something we will use next year. We want to experience what they experienced.

“At the end of the day, we are so happy that they did it and I have no doubt that if we did it they would be for us and they’d celebrate as much as we celebrated.”

“Dublin GAA is definitely on the rise and has great future. We just have to bring it together now.”

O’Dwyer’s inter-county season ended suddenly with defeat to Tipperary in the All-Ireland semi-final. After the joy of winning the Allianz League title and playing in a Championship semi-final for the first time since 1948, it was a cruel way for the year to end.

“The lowest point of my year was back in the dressing room after the semi-final because it was such an anti-climax to the year," he said.

“We were all thinking that we would see each other at training on Tuesday night or Thursday night. But it just stopped straight away.

“It was so, so disappointing. We are going to use that motivation for next year and we won’t want to feel that disappointment again.”

His focus is already turning to next year, when he says Dublin will no longer have the element of surprise they enjoyed in the season just gone.

The former Cashel King Cormacs man feels Dublin were underestimated by other teams last year, but is conscious that their success will make them one of the teams to beat in 2012.

“This year, every game people were waiting for Dublin to mess up,” he said. “They are on a high and they are going to mess up the next day.

“We won the League and people were saying, ‘It’s only the League and Kilkenny are missing a load of lads.’ We never got credit for anything.

“Then it came to the Championship and it was, ‘It’s a big game, but they are going to falter now.’

“The public, other teams were just underestimating us. To a certain extent we came underneath the radar.

“I still thought that every county team thought they could beat us, but at the same time they were a little bit worried.

“Next year is going to be a totally different story. Everyone knows the brand of hurling we play. It’s a physical game, in your face and high intensity.

“They will come in and want to match us, but not just match us. They will want to go higher.

“They will want to put hurling out of our mind. They will want to make sure we don’t have a good year this year. Everyone will come in with that attitude, but it is up to us to raise the intensity again.

“Not just to last year. If it was good enough last year we would have won. This year coming we need to raise it. We need to train that bit harder.”