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While Stephen Cluxton was preparing to kick one of the most famous scores in GAA history and the rest of Dublin prepared to celebrate their first senior All-Ireland since 1995, two future stars of the county’s greatest ever team were sitting together trying to process their own disappointment.<\/p>\n
Small believes that defeat may ultimately have helped drive many members of that group on.<\/p>\n
It could have been a catalyst for a lot of that stuff.<\/p>\n
I just thought that we were probably a better team and on the day they just nipped us.<\/p>\n
It definitely, in terms of that hunger and desire for a lot of that group, pushed them on to go on and achieve bigger and better things.<\/p>\n
The Dublin defender would move quickly through the county ranks.<\/p>\n
Pat Gilroy brought him into the O’Byrne Cup squad, while he also won 2 All-Ireland titles for Dublin’s under-21s under Jim Gavin and Dessie Farrell.<\/p>\n
However, John Small says nobody realised quite how special that minor group would eventually become.<\/p>\n
No, we didn’t know how good it was.<\/p>\n
Ciar\u00e1n was very much talked about, but guys like Paul Mannion developed into unbelievable players that we probably didn’t realise at the time how good he was.<\/p>\n
Jack, obviously myself.<\/p>\n
Brian Fenton couldn’t get a look in until under-21.<\/p>\n
Small also pointed to players such as Cormac Costello, Robbie McDaid, Davy Byrne and Niall Scully as part of the talent emerging around Dublin at the time.<\/p>\n
When you look on it in reflection, it obviously underpinned the Dublin team for a while, but at the time you don’t know how good it is.<\/p>\n
The former Dublin defender remains a supporter of the old system that saw the minor final played before the senior decider.<\/p>\n
The fixture is now played separately, but Small believes young players benefitted enormously from experiencing Croke Park at its fullest.<\/p>\n
I think that was brilliant.<\/p>\n
To play in front of a full Croke Park, even if it’s not completely full by the time the minors are over, you’re getting a big crowd and a big atmosphere.<\/p>\n
It’s a great learning.<\/p>\n
Fifteen years on, the result still hurts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Small has revealed that he and Jack McCaffrey headed for a beer inside Croke Park after Dublin’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,225025,112],"class_list":["post-528711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-john-small-dublin","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}