05-07-2025
'We were at our peak': Stephen Hiney still 'sore' about 2013 defeat to Cork
Calling La Sirène in the south of France. A family holiday briefly interrupted. A most obliging Stephen Hiney.
Today's semi-final gets a look in - eventually. The 2013 semi-final is given precedence. Twelve years later, that semi-final is still a 'sore point'.
2013 was Hiney's 12th's season in blue. He was beating for 30. He'd seen woeful times. He'd seen wonderful times. August 2013 had the potential to surpass them all.
The natural reflex of almost everyone involved in the semi-final is to go straight to Ryan O'Dwyer's second yellow on 50 minutes. Dublin led by the minimum. The momentum swung red thereafter.
Such is Hiney's character, he neither begins with the sending-off nor attaches defeat to their numerical disadvantage. He begins instead with himself.
'My own performance was disappointing. Conor Lehane's pace, there were times I couldn't get hold of him. Maybe in years previously, but not at that stage,' he recalls.
One can't but be impressed by such unprompted introspection. Maybe that's why when we went to Anthony Daly earlier in the week looking for a 2013 Dublin steer, Hiney was one of the first names he came back with.
'We were confident. Maybe others didn't, but we certainly thought we had a chance in that game,' Hiney continues.
'We had already done something we hadn't done in a long time which was to win Leinster, but we felt the opportunity was there to get to the All-Ireland final and potentially cause a massive upset. It probably still is sore that we didn't, but Cork won and we couldn't say we were hard done by. We did perform, just didn't quite get there.'
He drifts between the past and present. Points to the 2021 and '24 Leinster finals as occasions where the Dublin team promised in the build-up but under-delivered on the day. Dublin performed 12 years ago, but did they under-deliver in not at least reaching the final day?
'That year, I think, yes. We were at our peak. Dalo had got us to a point where we were fully bought in, we were getting the most out of the players we had on a consistent basis, which is a really difficult thing to do.
'Even after 2013, I felt we are going to push on from this, contest a lot more Leinster finals and have more silverware. But the reality is, we haven't. It stagnated and we haven't kicked on.'
During Dalo's six-year spell in the capital, they did a couple of sessions with the army rangers in the Curragh, particularly in Donnelly's Hollow, which the rangers turned into a torture chamber for the Dublin players.
The rangers would remark to the then manager that Hiney was one of the toughest GAA players they'd ever encountered. And this about a chap diagnosed as an insulin-dependent diabetic at 15. At age 22, he was told he'd a 'slim chance' of ever hurling again after undergoing corrective eye surgery, while there was a cruciate rupture six years on again.
The diabetes meant needles were packed into the gearbag before the socks and togs.
'On a regular day, my insulin levels would be absolutely fine. Come matchday, as the body prepares for the adrenaline, the fight or flight, it is just producing and releasing energy into my body at a level that was nearly counter-intuitive.
'Heading into Croke Park to play in front of the biggest crowds I would ever have, you would see my blood sugar levels start to rise with that adrenaline. A couple of hours out from the game, you'd need to start to take on a little bit more insulin. You'd then have a big comedown nearly the second the final whistle went as the adrenaline would flow out of you.'
Just as Dublin's graph was rising under Dalo, the construction sector was hurtling in the other direction. Hiney was a senior engineer with Sisk. The downturn prompted a career pivot. His brother spotted an Aldi advertisement in the Sunday Business Post regarding an area manager role.
'It intrigued me. Joined in January 2012 and never looked back. Definitely an obscure change from construction to a German discount retailer.' He and the family relocated to Edinburgh for the three years pre-Covid as he served as operations director for the west coast of Scotland. He's currently store operations director for Cavan, Monaghan, Donegal, and the greater Leinster region. The ladder climbed, the same as with Dublin.
Rounding back to this evening. The holidaying Hiney's don't check out of La Sirène until tomorrow morning.
'A real pity to miss it. Niall [Ó Ceallacháin] is my age, so we would have been on the same Dublin development squads the whole way up. David Curtin is with him from Ballyboden, who I would have hurled with for many a year. If they can get the Limerick performance out of the players again, Dublin will be very hard to beat.
'There definitely was a chat about coming home for it, but hopefully there'll be another big day after it.'
