No farewell to The Hill just yet for Stephen Cluxton - but will he play on?
Declan Bogue
ON A SCALE of one to ten, how surprised would you be to see Stephen Cluxton play for the Dublin senior football team in 2026?
One? Two? Maybe. Three? Ah, come on.
It was notable that in the announcement of Ger Brennan’s backroom team last week, there was no mention of retirement in connection with the most eye-catching addition.
That was in keeping with Cluxton’s previous seasons. 44 this December, throughout all his periods MIA, neither he nor Dublin announced a retirement, a temporary departure or a break. Nor did they mention a return.
He’s been named in the backroom, but you wouldn’t be ruling anything in or out. He might be perfectly happy being a goalkeeper and coach, rather than a goalkeeping coach.
You suspect Stephen Cluxton would be perfectly content being manager and goalkeeper. And county board chairman and chief dressing room sweeper if the roles were vacant.
So, maybe the stabilisers are not off for Evan Comerford, after all. Or David O’Hanlon of Na Fianna. Or Ballyboden’s Hugh O’Sullivan.
Either way, with Cluxton in the dressing room, you can be guaranteed that anyone wanting to stand between the sticks better be checking in at least three hours before training starts, that you could eat your dinner off their boots, and they carry kicking tees developed by NASA scientists.
The Continuity People of the Beckettian Dublin football story will be happy too.
The Dublin team retains a, ahem, beloved figure in the mould of a Jim Gavin and Dessie Farrell that is entirely unknowable but exudes some of the Main Character Energy of the Ibiza Final Boss (ok, this is terminally online guff now. I promise to do better.)
Imagine, all this way into the piece and we have yet to namecheck the other additions; Dean Rock, Denis Bastick and Professor Niall Moyna to Brennan’s sideline. Cluxton would do that to anyone.
A quick whistlestop on each man. Dean Rock was obviously a nerveless freetaker who managed to convey his knowledge in his Irish Times column. Some might think that unimportant, but it’s a difficult thing for many retired players to do without the elbow grease of a patient ghostwriter.
Rock had opinions and if he wasn’t one bit shy in sharing them in newsprint, he’d be damn sure to have even more to say behind closed doors.
Back when the world was in the grip of lockdown in the summer of 2020, Rock wasn’t allowing the grass to grow under his feet, instead setting up a kicking clinic.
Apart from the brief furore around the prices for such a service, Rock put it on his website that people were welcome to ‘Accelerate your progress by becoming obsessed with the detail and learning how to cope with pressure… The project will involve the development of each individuals own free-taking process through teaching cues, purposeful practice and the subsequent evaluation of this practice.’
Intersport Elverys / YouTube
So yeah, he’ll bring plenty to the party.
Denis Bastick is the story of the Dubs under Pat Gilroy made flesh. Discarded at various points, he captained Dublin to the All-Ireland Junior title in 2008, making his senior championship debut the following summer, by which time he was 28.
Athletic, with all sorts of sharp edges to go with his brawny gifts, he finished up eventually at the end of the 2017 season with five All-Ireland titles. When Pat Gilroy looked for blue-collar types to bring up to Monaghan for the lawless challenge games that shaped his Dublin team, Bastick’s name was always on that list.
Finally, you have Professor Niall Moyna, and this is where the St Vincent’s lineage becomes very visible.
A Professor of clinical physiology at the School of Health and Human Performance at DCU, Moyna was involved with St Vincent’s when they won the 2008 All-Ireland club title with Brennan as centre-back and Pat Gilroy as the figurehead of the attack.
He later was helping Gilroy as part of his backroom when Dublin won the 2011 All-Ireland. You wouldn’t want to play down his own coaching credentials either, as he has been involved as a coach with four Sigerson Cup winning sides, two of which were with CLuxton (2006) and Rock (2012).
Feeding into all of this – our hunch here – would be Gilroy.
Management may not be for him anymore – Jim Gavin’s excellence meant that a second go at the footballers was blocked and so he took a turn with the Dublin hurlers.
It would seem highly likely that his phone would be open for calls and advice. And would you bet against Mickey Whelan meeting for the occasional cup of tea?
The first point of order for all concerned is to assess where they are with the panel for 2026, and make improvements.
By coincidence or design, Ger Brennan found himself out in Chicago this summer and happened to be there when Brian Fenton was playing for the John McBrides’ club. What were the chances?
Fenton made no secret that he was taking a full year out. He played very little for Raheny this year and they are now out of the Dublin championship. He’d be well rested for a potential return. As it happens, he’s been on the end of a Bungee Chord in the party town of Queenstown, New Zealand according to his instagram today.
One other that might yet be tempted is Paul Mannion. His relationship with Dublin has always been fluid, with spells of foreign work and study interrupting his service.
Anyone watching the Dublin championship right now would still have him as one of the finest players in the county, and like many other forwards, he’s loving the two-point line. Raced lightly over the past decade, a return is not beyond him.
In covering all the bases with a backroom team, it’s difficult to see how Brennan could have done any better.
Watch out, because they will be right back in the mix.
The 42
