By John Harrington

David 'Dotsie' O'Callaghan was one of the stars of Dublin's dramatic 2013 Leinster SHC semi-final replay victory over reigning All-Ireland champions Kilkenny, scoring four points from play. He spoke to GAA.ie to give us the inside track on Dublin's first championship win over the Cats for 71 years.

Q: Anthony Daly was in his fifth year as Dublin manager in 2013, so by then the team had really settled down and matured?

Dotsie O'Callaghan: It had, yeah. The one thing that we always struggled with was consistency. In 2011 we had a massive breakthrough when we won the League and then went on to make another breakthrough by beating Galway in the Leinster semi-final. We probably froze a bit in the Leinster Final and Kilkenny were definitely motivated to avenge that League Final as well. We got back to an All-Ireland semi-final and produced a decent performance against Tipperary despite being down a few bodies.

So there was massive hope going into 2012 but we completely flopped that whole year which was hard to take after 2011. We thought after getting to an All-Ireland semi-final in 2011 that we'd kick on even further, but sport doesn't really work like that.

We never trained as hard as we did in 2012. We were doing two sessions a day, we were flat out. But we were relegated in the League and the whole year became a flop.

Q: Is there a chance Dublin over-trained in 2012?

DOC: I don't know. Maybe our heads just weren't in the right place. Speaking personally, I certainly wasn't playing well in 2012. I got a bad whack of pneumonia and maybe that was partly due to the double sessions and all the training I was doing in the morning and the evening, I don't know. I missed a lot of the League and then my father passed away at the end of April, so it wasn't a great time. I remember my father struggling in the bed and then having to go down to play Waterford in a league match and nearly hoping I wasn't named in the team at that stage. I was named in the team and you have to give your best to the cause, but I didn't even want to be there. We lost that match so we then had to play Galway in a relegation play-off which we lost after a replay and we ended up getting relegated.

I think that malaise led into our championship. That was the case for me personally anyway. It was just a bad year and it was tough to take because of the amount of work you're putting into it. As a player you want to get rewards for the hard work you put in, you want to win something, but at the end of 2012 I didn't really know where we were going. You're saying, "Jesus, do we have a chance at all? Are we gone past it?"

But we tended to be at our best when our backs were against the wall and managed to get promotion back up to Division 1 in 2013 when we beat Limerick in the Division 2 Final in Thurles, which was a great win. That was important in terms of giving the team back some confidence.

We were hammered by Tipperary in the League semi-final, but the week before that we'd an absolutely savage training camp down in Bere Island and the legs were still absolutely exhausted. We were well beat by Tipperary, but maybe you'd have to give Anthony Daly credit for having a master-plan.

You talk about that Dublin team and consistency, it cropped up as an issue again at the start of the 2013 Leinster Championship when we were absolutely blessed to get out of Wexford Park with a draw with Wexford. We were absolutely shocking that day and I was shocking myself and was taken off.

At that stage you're saying to yourself, I've had enough of this, and I'm not like that. That day Mikey Carton had a couple of great moments in the second-half and then we got the goal through Trollier (Eamonn Dillon) that got us the replay, but we were absolutely blessed to get it.

It wasn't exactly a great performance either in Parnell Park in the replay but we manged to get through it and get the win. The one thing that stood to us in 2013 was that there were games every week. We were developing and building the team and really gettting hurling.

Coming into that semi-final against Kilkenny, we'd seen how Offaly had put it up to them in the quarter-final in a big way. I think Kilkenny were looking a little bit leaky. You could nearly sense that they were a bit vulnerable and we were maybe a little bit unlucky not to beat them the first day.

Q: TJ Reid got a late equaliser for Kilkenny in the first match and the common refrain afterwards was that you don't get second chances against that Kilkenny team and that Dublin had passed up a great opportunity. What were you and your team-mates thinking after the drawn match?

DOC: That's it exactly, everyone was saying you've lost your chance and you have to be wary of some of that talk sinking into your mind. I think though we gained a lot of confidence from how we'd played in the drawn game and within the camp there was something there saying we can go on and take this.

I remember that week well. You'd be nearly saying to yourself, this is it, it's now or never. We have to win this. I remember driving up to the Wicklow gap and listening to music and just really trying to get into the mindset for it. You'd be told not to play on emotions, but at that stage I definitely was, I was saying this has to be it and I was really trying to get into the zone.

Q: You came on as a sub in the drawn match and did really well, scoring a couple of points. Did you know you'd start the replay?

DOC: I did, yeah, at the start of the week. I had done well in the drawn game when I came on fairly early as a sub and sometimes it's nice to be in that position. It tended to have a good effect on me sometimes, being in that position where you're coming on as a sub. You're not overthinking the game, you're just coming on and getting stuck into it.

But, yeah, I had come on in the drawn game and done quite well, so I was ready to really kick into gear from the start for the replay.

Q: That was a seriously strong Kilkenny team. They had won the two previous All-Irelands and would win the following two as well in 2014 and 2015. What was it like to play that Kilkenny team? What did it take to really go toe to toe with them?

DOC: We had beat ourselves against them on some occasions. For a few years that Kilkenny team was literally walking to All-Ireland semi-finals because there was no-one in Leinster to compete with them. They were cruising through.

In 2011 we probably froze a bit on the day against them in the Leinster Final. So we'd never really managed to properly challenge them. There was a lot of talk that we would put it up to them in the championship in 2011 and 2012 and maybe that affected us psychologically, all this talk about Dublin are the coming team. You'd have to have huge respect for Kilkenny too because that team just didn't do complacency. Whoever they were playing against they showed them the ultimate respect and would do their best to beat you by 30 or 40 points if they could. Other teams might ease off if they were winning well, but Kilkenny were so mentally strong they never did.

In 2013 we weren't overwhelmed by the occasion or the sense of expectation like we maybe had been previously. We just focused on our hurling.

Q: That Kilkenny team had all the skill in the world, but they were very physical too. Was that first box you had to tick when you played them - to be able to match that physicality? That Dublin team certainly had the men to do that in 2013.

DOC: You don't necessarily have to be a huge guy in hurling, but you have to be able to stand up physically, you have to have that aggression to really go for the ball and be willing to fight for it and put the hand up. We did have a lot of strong guys, our half-back line was brilliant that day. You had Mikey (Carton), Rushey (Liam Rushe), and (Stephen) Hiney. The backs were strong all round and we had (Conal) Keaney and Danny (Sutcliffe) in the half-forward line. So we did have a lot of strong, powerful men as well.

Q: Dublin started the match strongly which was always going to be important after the drawn match to show you meant business again. You were 0-9 to 0-4 ahead by the 24th minute.

DOC: Yeah, we were moving well. You need that start to get your confidence going. As the first half was going on the belief really started to course through the veins. We were getting some great scores and linking up really well and playing some good hurling. It was great to have that lead, we probably could have gotten a goal or two as well, but we eventually got one in the second-half. I had a chance cleared off the line and thankfully Danny Sutcliffe was there to pick it up and burst through and score a cracking goal which proved to be crucial.

At the end we had 13 men behind the ball trying to stop them, and when the final whistle went it was a really great moment. Some of the memories would still really stick out. I remember driving home from Portlaoise and just being on an absolute high as all the messages came through. Ray McManus got a good picture of me and Dalo coming down the tunnel after the match and it was nice to have a picture like that of the day. There were just great scenes like Brian Cody coming into our dressing-room after. You have to admire Kilkenny because there's so much respect there. You know what hurling means to them down there, so to have Cody come in and talk to us the way he did after the match meant a lot because he is such an inspirational man.

Q: Did he pretty much congratulate you on the win but also say it wouldn't count for much if you didn't back it up by winning the Leinster Final?

DOC: Yeah, that was it, more or less. He never gives much away and is always focused on the job in hand, but I always got the impression he had a good bit of respect for Dublin hurling. I think he was aware of the potential we had and what we could achieve, even though we hadn't previously performed against them in Championship hurling. The focus quickly turned to the Leinster Final. We knew what he was saying was absolutely true, it was no good beating Kilkenny in that game if we didn't go on and win the Leinster Final in Croke Park. Thankfully we did.

Q: Did it mean all the more to you because you'd been hurling with Dublin for a long time and, as you say, had such a tough year in 2012.

DOC: It did, yeah. It was special for all of us because a lot of lads had been on the go with Dublin for a long time at that stage. You're putting in a lot of effort and you're there to try to win things. The Dublin hurling project meant a lot to me and I wanted to be part of teams that made breakthroughs and achieved things. When you put that much into it, then success is what you want, that's the reality. Winning a National League was phenomenal, but then we flopped so badly. So to come back and win the Leinster Championship was all the more tangible in terms of feeling like we had made progress and were going somewhere.

I would have played with the county footballers as well and I was laughed at over the years by some friends and by some football people for committing to the hurling. All you'd hear would be, "Sure what are you going to do there?" So proving people wrong by winning that Leinster Chamionship and lifting a hurling trophy with Hill 16 a sea of blue was nice. It was just a great couple of weeks back in 2013. As it turned out, that year was probably our best opportunity to win the big one, but it didn't work out unfortunately. You were hoping it would lead to bigger and better things and that Dublin would be up at a level where we're competing all the time, but inconsistency would remain a problem unfortunately. The Yo Yo team, we should have been called!