On a day when some of Dublin’s old warhorses once again led the Croke Park battle-charge, it was not insignificant that four of the Dublin players on the field at the final whistle were in their maiden championship campaign.Over the course of Sunday’s All-Ireland SFC quarter-final, six players in their debut season played for Dublin against Galway. It is fair to say Tim Deering, Josh Bannon and Liam Smith could stand among the Dublin faithful on Hill 16 without a flurry of supporters picking them out. And yet, all three played their part on Sunday. As did Seán Guiden, kicking over the final score of the game – his eighth in the championship. Eoin Kennedy and Charlie McMorrow – both also in their debut season with the Dubs – started in defence and were replaced late on after strong performances. Plenty of new blues among the older ones. After his first game as Dublin manager last January, an O’Byrne Cup win over Laois, Ger Brennan spoke about the net he had cast across the capital that winter to try catch some fresh talent.At the time, Brennan said the new management team had looked at over 130 players from approximately 36 clubs – all the way from senior A football to Junior A.On Sunday at Croke Park, 12 different Dublin clubs were represented on the pitch over the course of the game. If Niall Scully and Ciarán Kilkenny et al sparked the surge, the likes of McMorrow and Guiden are the players on which Brennan now hopes to sustain a new blue wave. How sustainable it will prove to be remains to be seen, but the fact Dublin are still stubbornly standing in this championship suggests it might prove harder to leave them in the rearview mirror than many imagined only a few weeks back.Niall Scully on the march for Dublin in their All-Ireland SFC Round 3 victory against Donegal at Croke Park. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho Remember, prior to their All-Ireland SFC Round 3 game against Donegal, Dublin had played six games in Croke Park in 2026 – winning only one.That league victory over Monaghan was the only victory amid defeats to Donegal, Kerry, Armagh, Westmeath and Louth.Prior to the Donegal game, their championship record in 2026 read: a win over Wicklow in Aughrim, a win over Louth in Portlaoise, an extra-time loss to Westmeath in Croke Park, a defeat to Louth in Croke Park, a win over Cavan in Breffni Park. Dublin weren’t exactly uprooting any trees.But in the space of a week they have now eliminated two of the All-Ireland favourites in Donegal and Galway. The transformation has been quite something.“A couple of victories in the championship, the guys are full of confidence and they’re probably a couple of feet higher walking around their clubs in Dublin the next few weeks because they’re still in the competition, still in the All-Ireland semi-final,” said Brennan when asked to explain the upturn in form.“I don’t have an exact answer for you. It’s momentum within the 70 minutes and it’s maximising when you are on top within a game.“Form has kind of gone out the window in some ways, when you look at who’s left in the competition.“You’ve got Mayo, [who] had a fine league. We obviously had our league. Kerry got to the league finals, didn’t perform well against Donegal that day, but they’ve performed well since after the championship loss against Donegal in Killarney.“And then ourselves, we’re just starting to find a bit of a rhythm. But I suppose it’s about peaking at the right time.”There has been a defiance about Dublin over the last two showings. Not a team raging against the dying of the light, but a side hellbent on showing the rest of the country they don’t see themselves as a peripheral player in this Sam Maguire race.Scully made his championship debut in 2017 and was an All Star in 2020. On Sunday, he produced arguably his greatest ever display for Dublin.Paddy Small put his body on the line when required, Brian Howard covered every blade of grass, Colm Basquel showed leadership with his piercing runs, Davy Byrne brought calmness to the defence and Kilkenny knitted it all together – the unflappable conductor of Dublin’s Croke Park performance. Con O'Callaghan strokes home a penalty for Dublin in Sunday's All-Ireland SFC quarter-final win against Galway at Croke Park. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho Up top, Con O’Callaghan didn’t look like a player carrying a persistent hamstring injury. That said, don’t be surprised if, at the end of the season, it emerges the team captain played the latter stages of the championship pretty much on one leg. Dublin’s defence for the closing stages against Galway was comprised of Bannon, Deering, Smith, Byrne, Lee Gannon and Theo Clancy. Three of those players were appearing in an All-Ireland quarter-final for the first time while Gannon and Clancy have had difficult seasons with injury. And yet Dublin were the more composed team coming down the stretch.“We’re all old lads trying to run around there, so we need a bit of youth,” said Scully when receiving his man-of-the-match award on the side of the Croke Park pitch.“And to be fair to every single young lad, they have come in, given their hardest. We just haven’t got the results, but thankfully, today we did.”Just when we all thought they were about to slip away and dine out on the triumphs of the past for a little while, the Dubs are refusing to budge too far away from the top table.It’s Kerry next – a game with just a smidgen of tradition. But it appears this is a Dublin team starting to look to the future again.