Senior Hurling Team Report: 25th April 2025

Having secured two points on the board after last Saturday’s win over Offaly, all eyes turn again to Parnell Park for tomorrow’s Leinster Senior Hurling Championship game against Wexford.

Commenting on last Saturday’s win, Dublin Senior Hurling manager Niall Ó Ceallacháin said, “It ebbed and flowed all the way. Offaly are going to cause a lot of problems for teams this year and they posed a few challenges for us. I thought that in general, and while there’s lots of elements of our game that we’d look to improve on for this weekend’s game, I was really pleased with the character shown by our lads, particularly in the last six or seven minutes”.

Niall continued, “But also throughout the game we took a good few sucker blows including injuries and a couple of goals against the run of play, I thought the lads showed great resilience in sticking at it and responding well in those scenarios. But look, the first game is always going to be about getting two points and moving forward and we’ve done that”.

Looking forward to this Saturday and the quick turnaround between games, Niall said, “We knew that these seven or so days would be quite intense with the first two games coming so close together. We’ve a break for two weeks then so we haven’t been looking beyond Offaly last week and Wexford this coming Saturday. It’s a home game again for us so we’re looking forward to more great support”.

As to what we can expect from tomorrow’s Wexford game Niall said, “In the last few years there hasn’t been much between the two teams. We suspect there’ll be nothing between us again on Saturday. We’ll be approaching it like we have done every week in the League and Championship, but we know that as the weeks march on, the levels of intensity will increase and we’re looking to drive our performances as high as we can get them week on week so we’re very much focussing on ourselves and what we can bring to the table this Saturday”.

Niall continued, “The objectives of these first seven or eight days of the Championship is to win each game and to have the four points by this weekend and we can look forward then”.

Referring to the importance of the depth and strength of the Dublin bench, Niall said, “It was shown last weekend, and it will be needed again next weekend, that the depth of our panel is going to be really tested and not only lads that made an impact from the bench last Saturday but also lads that didn’t make the pitch. They’re all going to be needed for next Saturday and for the subsequent games”.

Looking to the Dublin fans again for their support, Niall said, “We’re very much looking forward to meeting Wexford on our home ground in Parnell Park tomorrow and again the lads would love to see a big Dublin crowd there. They were really lifted by the response of the crowd last weekend, particularly in the last ten minutes”.