Former Dublin boss Anthony Daly has hit out over the criticism which accused some of his players as being 'manufactured hurlers'.

Writing in his new autobiography 'Dalo', which is set to hit the shelves this week, Daly defended his former players from the criticism, which he believed originated from The Sunday Game panel, claiming that Dublin had too many "manufactured hurlers".

"When we scored 2-25 against Galway in the 2013 Leinster final, nobody was talking about (our) basics," he writes. "Some of the hurling we played in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cork was as good as anything seen in Croke Park during such an electric summer. Surely you need shooters and good players to play in those kind of games? Yet all of a sudden, now we're only seen as 'manufactured hurlers'.

"I had retreated into the bunker at home after the Tipperary game when Richie Stakelum sent me a text and told me to look up (Brian) Cody. In an interview he'd done that week, Cody had rejected the characterisation of Dublin's players as 'manufactured hurlers'. I'd never texted Brian Cody in my life, but I took out my phone and tapped a few words on the screen: 'Brian, just want to say thanks for what you said during the week'.

'Just thought it was a load of rubbish, Dalo,' he texted back.

"How do you manufacture hurlers? Is it that you don't manufacture them in time?

"Yet where was this debate last year when we could have won an All-Ireland and Tipp were gone from the championship in the first week in July?."

Daly also weighed in on the debate that Dublin's dual players should be choosing one code over the other before entering the minor grade.

"If Loughnane or Cusack are saying that Dublin needs to ensure guys pick hurling ahead of football at 15, that's fairly rich coming from the both of them," Daly writes. "Ger is a hurling purist from Feakle where football has no place or order. Although he apparently was a decent footballer, I'm sure Cusack would be ordering boxes of pen-knives if football ever became a serious imposition on the hurling culture in Cloyne.

"It's a bit rich for Loughnane and Cusack to be banging that drum. I wouldn't entertain that argument because the lads we have are the lads we want. They would give you everything and that's all you can ask."

Tweet

Most Read Stories