The Cormac McAnallen trophy will remain in Australia, as Ireland fell to a narrow, three-point defeat in today's second test in Perth. Ireland started well - scoring two goals in a single, first-quarter minute - but ultimately fell away as the game wore on. The Aussies' superior levels of conditioning and fitness told, as Ireland were suffocated by the remarkable speed of their tackling. It could, perhaps, have been a different story for Ireland had they not been shorn of their All-Ireland champions, but no Dublin players travelled with Joe Kernan's squad to Australia.
Speaking on RTE after the game, Ciaran Whelan admitted that he was "a little bit disappointed that there was no Dublin representative", while Sean Cavanagh explained why there was no Dublin representation:
I was part of the initial panel that was to go to Australia and play, and I was part of the Whatsapp group, and the Dublin players were there and they were posting that they couldn't make the training on the Friday night, couldn't make the training on the Saturday morning, and that just boils down to one thing: the GAA calendar.
It's not that the Dublin players didn't want to be there.
Former Monaghan footballer Dick Clerkin, eager to drum up a bit of publicity for his incipient Irish Indo column on the series, tweeted after the game that he would be calling out the Dublin players for snubbing the series.
Will be giving my assessment of this years International rules in Monday’s @IndoSport ....I’ll also be calling out the Dubs on their snub of the series.... let’s call it for what it is!!
— D Clerkin (@clerkin_d) November 18, 2017
Eager to disabuse Clerkin and others of the idea that the Dublin players snubbed the series, James McCarthy and Jack McCaffrey tweeted in response:
Do some research
— James McCarthy (@JamesyMac26) November 18, 2017
Have done, and I see plenty of you were free to travel to Boston this wknd! Regardless of individual reasons, you can’t deny the optics are damning. To say not one Dublin player could have made that trip simply isn’t credible!
— D Clerkin (@clerkin_d) November 18, 2017
Do you even know who was asked? You have no idea
— James McCarthy (@JamesyMac26) November 18, 2017
