Dublin's hopes of a breakthrough in Leinster may have been dealt a blow by the decision to allow Galway and Antrim to contest the province, but Ballyboden St Enda's star and county captain Stephen Hiney has welcomed the move. Anything to enliven a stagnant provincial scene, he says. They were the coming team, it seemed. Wexford have held their own against the rest of the country, Kilkenny apart. And Dublin have held their own against Wexford. Ergo, the Dubs were at the head of the queue to replace the Slaneysiders as challengers-in-chief to Leinster's all-conquering behemoths. That is, until Congress in October, when the Leinster waters were muddied, perhaps forever, by the invitation extended to Galway and Antrim. It was a move which gave rise to many detractors, notable among them the bitterly disappointed Dublin county chairman Gerry Harrington. But if some have reacted with hostility to the development, Dublin hurling captain Stephen Hiney can see the positives. "I'm in favour of it, for the trial period at least," he says. "The Leinster Hurling Championship has probably gone a bit stale over the past few years so it can't do any harm to liven it up a bit. "Kilkenny seem to be a few steps ahead of the rest of the country at the minute. They have an amazing hunger, they stick to a simple game-plan and could probably put out three or four inter-county sides. But bringing Galway and Antrim in will only improve the standard of the Leinster championship as a whole." If the change is to become a permanent one, the last "real" Leinster championship, as determined by geography, saw Dublin draw ever closer to a scalp which would have flagged their progress as a genuine future contender for silverware. A point separated Dublin and Wexford in 2007. A year later, it was even closer, with a replay required before the Yellow-Bellies eventually advanced to their by then annual final mauling by Kilkenny's Cats. "We knew it would be close against Wexford again," says Hiney, "but we thought maybe we would be able to come out on the right end of it this year. We really thought we had their measure but it wasn't to be." The first game, in particular, when Wexford's first point in first half injury time was greeted with ironic jeers by the crowd at Nowlan Park, is a source of frustration for the Dubs full back. On that occasion, the Dubs turned in a fine performance but early goals from Stephen Banville and Eoin Quigley (the slightly surreal half-time score was 0-11 to 2-1) gave the favourites a foothold they hardly deserved. Hiney says: "That game was very frustrating. They kept it alive with those goals and that's what allowed them to pull it out in the end. If we kept them out, we probably would have won the game because I think we were playing the better hurling at the time." Wexford grasped their second chance to edge the replay by a goal, and Dublin's interest in the championship was ended by a five-point defeat to Cork at Pairc Ui Chaoimh in July, itself a sign of their increasing emergence as a hurling force. That emergence must cope with at least one major change ahead of next year, however. By the time the 2009 campaign pucks off, Dublin will have a new man in charge, with Tommy Naughton having stepped down in October. Hiney has mixed feelings about the departure of his old under-21 boss, keen to stress the progress made under Naughton while at the same time acknowledging the need for a new voice. He says: "Tommy did a lot for Dublin hurling. He took us from a stage where we could barely compete with virtually anybody in Leinster to a stage where we can go into games against Wexford with a realistic ambition of beating them. "We still have a young team, Simon Lambert and Paul Ryan, Johnny McCaffrey seems like he's been around for a couple of years but he's still only 21 or so. The average age of the team is very young so lots of managers might be looking at that, but we're not a team for some point in the future. We have to start producing results now." Ger Loughnane, Nicky English and DJ Carey, three of hurling's luminaries, were linked with the job in the wake of Naughton's departure, and Hiney believes Dublin officials must make the right appointment. "We don't want a big-name manager just for the sake of it," he declares. "We don't want someone to come in who looks good but mightn't do the job. We need somebody who has the right credentials, and who can improve us now." On the club scene, Hiney was part of the Ballyboden St Enda's side which ended a long wait for Dublin county championship glory with victory over St Vincent's in 2007. 'Boden went on to push Birr all the way in a dramatic Leinster final, but it was the Dublin championship breakthrough which remained most satisfying in the final roll-call. "We had to win it," says Hiney. "We had won everything at underage level. I have three under-21s in a row but like Dublin in a way, we struggled to make the breakthrough [at senior level]. We had been in loads of finals and semi-finals without winning one before last year, so it was as much relief as anything when we finally managed it. We've brought through a lot of younger players this year but last year, that team was at its peak. We said to ourselves that there was no way we weren't winning it." Unleashed from the shackles of the county championship, Ballyboden took Leinster by storm and only went down by a point to traditional superpowers Birr in a provincial final rendered almost farcical by a gale force wind. The weather and the quality of opponents notwithstanding, Hiney feels his side failed to perform to their true capabilities. "I don't think we really did ourselves justice in the final," he recalls. "The weather was awful and you can't take anything away from Birr. They beat us fair and square on the day. But I think we played better in the run-up to that final. And we'll be hoping to get the chance to put that right." ** Stephen Hiney is an engineer with John Sisk & Sons Ltd, main contractor for the Microsoft Data Centre project at Grange Castle, Clondalkin. The Data Centre project, which will house tens of thousands of computer servers when complete, will cost in the region of ?370m. It is expected to be completed in 2009. Tweet

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