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Ger Brennan has confirmed that Stephen Cluxton’s playing days with Dublin are over after joining his management team.
Once it emerged earlier this month that Cluxton, along with other former teammates Denis Bastick and Dean Rock, would be working alongside Brennan, the assumption was that he would not be playing into 2026, a quarter of a century after his debut, and so it has proved. “He won’t be playing,” said the new Dublin boss.
“He’s there 100% as a coach/selector. His duties extend beyond goalkeeping. There’s a great goalkeeping coach there, Josh Moran, and he’s going to continue to stay in that role and Stephen will be looking at the bigger picture.
“Having played with Stephen, with Denis and with Dean over the years, obviously when I finished up, those lads went on to win five, eight, nine All-Irelands respectively, but their ability to read the game on the field was something which helped make us what we were and certainly getting over the hump in 2011 and what happened subsequently. So they’re like having coaches on the pitch from a playing point of view, so to have their expertise now off the field, given what they gave to the county on the field, it’s certainly a massive addition to the set-up, but Stephen is 100% part of the management team.”
When asked if Cluxton was mulling over the possibility of playing on when Brennan first approached him, he replied: “I honestly don’t know is the answer. When I was appointed, obviously I had a small bit of homework done in advance of the appointment, I guess, to whet the appetite of the lads involved. And that was the genesis of it.
“And from there, we had a couple of kind of follow-up chats. He has a lot of learning even from last year in terms of what was good and areas for improvement, and he’s keen to try to help bridge that gap and improve from last year’s set-up. So I don’t know is the answer.”
With Brennan acknowledging that Cluxton is “probably not one for announcements”, this is as close to official confirmation that one of the great inter-county careers has come to a conclusion. “I think back to Shane Ryan of Naomh Mearnog and Stephen Cluxton, and Clucko dinking balls out with his left foot from the Canal End over to the Cusack Stand side and Shane Ryan, who probably was six foot, I think he won an All-Star in 2008, and I think he was Dublin’s only All Star that year,” Brennan reflected, on how Cluxton revolutionised the kickout in Gaelic football.
“So I think those two lads, Stephen and Shane, certainly developed that synergy in terms of trying to be a bit more creative and possession-based from our kick-out. Pat [Gilroy] then came in with Mickey [Moran] and the work we would have done with the club was more of a possession-based opportunity from a kick-out as opposed to the ball just becoming a 50-50. So I suppose the whole thing kind of evolved from there, that would be my first memories of it in terms of the role of the goalkeeper from general play.”
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