For Dublin and manager Dessie Farrell, there was vindication in Sunday's All-Ireland final win over Kerry.
The Dubs, perennial winners in the 2010s, had gone two years without even reaching the All-Ireland final, after their run of dominance was stopped at six-in-a-row by James Horan's Mayo in the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final.
Last year, it was Kerry that stopped them en route to their first All-Ireland triumph in eight years and, coming into 2023, it was the Kingdom and the Dubs who were tipped by many to lift Sam Maguire come the end of July.
That was ultimately how it panned out, with the two sides building throughout the championship summer to meet in Croke Park on Sunday afternoon.
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The season behind them had seen several stars of old from the Dublin team convinced to return to action, with the headline names of Stephen Cluxton, Jack McCaffrey, and Paul Mannion rejoining the panel during the 2023 season.
All three would prove influential for Dessie Farrell's side on Sunday, with Cluxton going 100% on his kick-outs, McCaffrey making a huge impact off the bench, and Paul Mannion earning the Sunday Game's man of the match award for his immense forward play.
After two years of question marks as to whether he was the right man to take over from the legendary Jim Gavin, Dessie Farrell should rightly feel that Sunday's win is vindication of his management ability - and ex-Mayo manager James Horan laid out how impressive Farrell's achievement had been.
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Dublin GAA: James Horan heaps praise on Dessie Farrell
30 July 2023; Dublin manager Dessie Farrell before the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship final match between Dublin and Kerry at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Speaking on the Irish Examiner's Gaelic Football Show, James Horan lavished praise on Dublin's Dessie Farrell for the tough decisions he had made en route to All-Ireland glory, as well as his ability to weather several storms.
He noted the strength of Farrell in taking over in charge from the five-in-a-row winning Jim Gavin, and claiming another Sam Maguire during the COVID-19 pandemic:
It's been a topic of much discussion, the last couple of years he's had. Taking over from Jim Gavin during COVID - managing through COVID was an absolute nightmare. He had all of that....everything that was going on. All those great players that left.
He dealt with all of that, and he has a very different style to what Jim Gavin was. [With] the success that they'd had, it was such a difficult job to take in the first place. He was under pressure from day one. Some of the recent defeats...that would have all added to the mix.
Alongside the return of Cluxton, McCaffrey, and Mannion to the panel this year, 2011 All-Ireland winnning manager Pat Gilroy was brought in to the Dublin back room team during the 2023 season, in a move for which Farrell was widely praised.
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Horan added to that praise, and said that Farrell deserved credit for making the difficult calls to bring in Gilroy and Cluxton, and said Farrell had done an immense job "pulling all those strings":
To have won two All-Irelands under his tenure, to bring in Pat Gilroy - it's undoubted he's a very strong, excellent guy to have around the place, but to bring him in...whether it was his idea or a player suggestion, to bring it in and to weld the whole thing together - there's so much that goes on...somebody has to be over that to pull all those strings together.
You could see it in the group - for Stephen Cluxton to come back and do what he did, there's gonna be a few players - Evan Comerford, for example - who wouldn't have been happy with that. For other players to come back, for other people to get game time so early when guys have been training their whole year...there's so many different dynamics going on underneath the surface that we don't know about that have to be managed as well.
Whether or not Dessie Farrell will stay on as Dublin manager remains to be seen - but he and his team can certainly be proud of their 2023 results.
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