Sean Cavanagh: Dublin hero was my toughest opponent and the reason why they defied Mayo again
The Dublin GAA defender is a GAA version of peak Gareth Bale and Brian O'Driscoll.
There is this question I get asked all the time. Doesn’t matter where you are or who you are with - the query always crops up. “Name the best player you ever played against.”
I’d always give an answer but today I actually gave it some serious thought as I watched Dublin and Mayo trade points right the afternoon.
The clock was on 50 minutes when the TV camera panned to this bushy haired fella on the line. He still looks about 23. He still moves as quickly as he did at 20. That was when I first encountered him. The 2013 League final, Dublin against Tyrone.
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We were a couple of points up heading down the stretch. "See this one out, lads,” we kept telling one another. There was a time when we would have.
But that was pre-Jack McCaffrey, pre-Jim Gavin, pre-Dublin turning from a football team into a machine.
Positioned within a zonal marking system, McCaffrey came running at me.
“I’ve got this,” I thought.
Then came this sound. Whizz, followed by this flash of blue, followed by a Dublin point. A few minutes later they were level. Next they were ahead.
They have pretty much stayed ahead of the rest of the country ever since.
McCaffrey is a big reason for that.
What he has is speed, the kind of speed you can’t live with.
Plus he has timing, Serge Blanco/Brian O’Driscoll timing - that sporting intelligence of sensing where the space is about to appear and when you should arrive into it.
No Gaelic footballer is as fast or as smart at getting this part of the game right.
We saw it again today in the Hyde.
When Mayo closed in for an equaliser, he appeared from nowhere to produce a tackle, which - replays showed - should have been given as a wide.
Instead a 45 was incorrectly given which Colm Reape scored.
When Ryan O’Donoghue subsequently put Mayo ahead deep into stoppage time, you thought, ‘right, one minute to go, Mayo are going to take a scalp here’.
Remember Dublin/Mayo in the 2017 All-Ireland?
Mayo fans will never forget that day.
They had the lead late on. They then got pinned back, Dublin going ahead with the clock in the red and just one chance left for Mayo redemption.
Yet from the kick-out Dublin had a pre-rehearsed plan, every one of their players grappling with the Mayo defenders, denying David Clarke an opportunity to get the ball to a team mate.
It was ballsy. It was cynical. It was the dark arts in full view of 83,000 people.
And it is what winners do.
Dublin won that day because they resorted to gamemanship. Mayo drew yesterday because they stayed clean.
You can’t.
Not always.
Not in the dying moments of the Championship.
Not against Dublin.
Not when they have someone like Jack McCaffrey is in their side.
Sure enough he was involved again in the build up to their equaliser.
Great players do that. When the clutch moments come, they find a way to get the ball and make an impact.
McCaffrey found space. He found a running lane to drive towards the Mayo goal.
Watching him reminds me of that Gareth Bale goal in the 2014 Copa del Rey final when the then Real Madrid winger chose to leave the pitch to find the space he needed to escape the attentions of the Barcelona defender, Marc Bartra.
For a couple of seconds, Bale was on the far side of the sideline. Then he reappears onto the field, ball at his feet, Bartra in his slipstream, and scores.
That’s McCaffrey.
He just finds space and finds a way.
He has it all. Speed, strength, intelligence, unselfishness, the ability to have craic, the humility to sit on the bench for 53 minutes.
I’m not sure I could have handled being a sub at that stage of my career after being crowned player of the year and winning All-Irelands.
McCaffrey has six All-Irelands, a footballer of the year prize and three All-Stars.
Yet he is willing to wait, willing to do his bit for the team in a 20-minute cameo.
Two years ago, when he and Stephen Cluxton had retired, I wrote off Dublin and considered them finished as a force.
Then Cluxton and McCaffrey - as well as Paul Mannion - came back and my opinion changed.
They are still the team to beat. There have another couple of gears left in them in this year's Championship.
For me it is them, Kerry, Donegal, Armagh, Galway, Mayo in that order.
But I am not ruling Derry out of reappearing into the mix and causing a major upset.
As for Mayo, they are a team I continue to respect and admire.
Seeing Aidan O’Shea move pass my total of 89 Championship appearances yesterday was a source of pride.
I rate Aidan.
Yet because he has a social media presence, because he is considered Mr Cool, because he has not been a prolific scorer and because Mayo have lost so many All-Irelands with Aidan as one of their key men, he gets a hard time.
And I don’t like that because I see the value he brings to that Mayo side.
He is there to be a creator rather than a scorer; there to drive at defenders, create opportunities and then deliver passes.
His background as a basketball player was so evident today with those soft hand passes and that considerable upper-body strength. No opponent was as difficult to dispossess as him.
Playing 89 Championship games required a lot of commitment. Yet I had a taste of glory within those 89 games. Aidan has lost six All-Ireland finals in his 90 matches.
Yet here he is, still chasing that elusive win.
You have to respect that willpower.
Sadly for him, though, on today’s evidence, he and Mayo will still come up short in 2024. Yes, they’re a good team. But they need to also be a cynical one.
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