For a minute or two as half-time approached at Croke Park a fortnight ago, all Anthony Daly could think of was the first round of the 1992 Clare county championship. Clarecastle versus Newmarket. White-hot favourites versus rank outsiders. But something strange happened that evening in Cusack Park. Newmarket began well and proceeded to stay in the game. The longer they stayed in the game, the nervier Clarecastle became. Eventually Daly, being young enough at the time, panicked. Then a couple of the other lads panicked. Then everybody panicked. Clarecastle ended up conceding five goals and losing. The moral of the story? Obvious. Don't panic when you're not going as well you should be.

The Dublin hurlers weren't going as well as they should have been two weeks ago. Standing there on the sideline under the Hogan Stand, their manager could see exactly why. They'd fallen into the oldest trap in the jungle. A Dotsy O'Callaghan goal after 13 minutes, three quick points to add to it and soon Dublin were 1-5 to 0-1 ahead. Cruising. "But instead of driving on and having the game won at half-time, we got cocky." Daly could spot it in a few of his players. He couldn't but spot it. Hey, we're gonna win this handy! I'll score a few points! And sure what if my man hits a ball, because I'll hit the next one!

Their decision-making flew out the window. They were destroyed under the dropping ball, Antrim making a string of clean catches in the 15 minutes before the interval, mostly because the Antrim player attacked the drop while his Dublin opponent waited under the hanging sliotar. By half-time the visitors were back to within a point and a small part of Daly felt like screaming. All the training, all the mileage, all the media coverage to fall at the first obstacle? Against Antrim? At Croke Park?

So just before they went in at half-time, and remembering the Newmarket fiasco from all those years ago, he had a quick word with Richie and Vinny and Hetherton. Even the slightest trace of panic among the management would transmit itself to the players, they agreed, and God only knew what might happen then. Calmness was essential. Somehow resisting the temptation to go all Old Testament on them, Daly spoke firmly but calmly and told them where they were going wrong. The message got through. Dublin were a different team on the restart, competed much better under the dropping ball, created a host of chances, drove an unhealthy proportion of them wide but still won by 10 points. Phew.

Looking back, he can see why it threatened to go so wrong. All year they'd been talking about 1 June. All year, literally, right from 1 January. "Even though we'd spoken about the crowd, how big it would be and how we had to ignore it, some of the lads were nervous. Maybe I put a bit too much pressure on them. Maybe I'd done the same with Clare for those first-round matches in Munster. Any interview I did after taking the Dublin job, I kept playing down the league. 'There's only one day that matters' sort of thing."

His consolation is that, by way of contrast, they've barely had time to think about today. Thirteen days, not five months. The day after the Antrim game they had "a bit of a chat". Because of the under-21s' involvement against Wexford the next gathering wasn't until Thursday and was necessarily curtailed. They tore into it on the Saturday and again last Monday, but Wednesday amounted to no more than 35 minutes and Friday to a few pucks. Too little time? Too little preparation? He'll find out today. He'll find out, he'll live and he'll learn.

• • •

He left the Clare job the Thursday after the 2006 All Ireland semi-final. The Clare job didn't leave him until the following December.

"For three years it's your every waking thought. What can I do differently? What could give us an edge? Then it's gone and there's a big void. You do suffer. It's like a relationship breaking down or something. A death in the family is a bit more severe, obviously. But for a time you're there thinking, what do I do now?"

His two years with Kilmoyley constituted the perfect methadone. In Kerry they take their club hurling deadly seriously, but Daly, being a neighbouring shaman as opposed to being a member of the tribe, was able to park the job once he was back on the ferry in Tarbert on the way home from training. With Clare, there was never a moment where the notion of parking the job arose.

The first year with Kilmoyley, they were beaten in the county final. "You've no luck as a manager at all," someone said to him in mother-of-sorrows tones. (He was able to slag them about it 12 months later when Kilmoyley went one better.) Yet even if Clare didn't win an All Ireland on his watch as manager, what of it? What makes him happy is that it was a wonderful experience, that he reckons he got most of his decisions right and that there aren't many things he'd do differently if given the opportunity again. Hurling, he adds with some understatement, has been kind to him. "Had you told me at the end of 1994 what would happen to me over the next 15 years I'd have said to go away and sign yourself in somewhere."

Some day he'll wind up back where it all began, coaching Clarecastle, but not just yet. He'd like eventually to have another cut off the Clare job. Last winter, though, found him at a loose end. What do I do now?

The call from Dublin came through one Monday or Tuesday in December. The emissaries from the capital arrived in Clare the following Friday, the few days in between affording Daly the time to contemplate. Yes, he decided, this was a job he'd like. But the men in the suits still had to sell it. They sold it well. The hurling stage soon greeted a new walk-on character. Anthony Daly, Dublin manager.

What he liked about the Dublin officials was their realism. There was no pie in the sky, no talk of McCarthy Cups, "none of that craic". They didn't even talk about winning Leinster. Instead they announced that Dublin hurling was at a certain level and needed to go up to the next level. Realistic. Attractively realistic.

He's well aware that if his adopted county are to make a breakthrough it may be not under him but under the man after him. So be it. "You can't say, 'Ah lads, I'll take it in two years' time.' In 10 years' time you mightn't be able to walk. Will you even be alive? What would you be waiting for? If I can lend my bit to Dublin making the breakthrough, play my part in that whenever it might happen, I'll be well happy."

The journey takes him three and a half hours each way. He'll drive up by Athlone and home by Roscrea, or maybe the other way around. Whatever vagary he takes. Early on, three times a week, it was difficult, but like everything else the body adjusted. On the way home, Mountrath or Ballinasloe mean a coffee stop. In the car he'll have Newstalk's Off The Ball or Five Live or Christy Moore for company. His sports shop in Ennis is seeing the effects of the downturn but, due to its good customer base, weathering them. The pub has been leased since February. When he gets home at five or 10 past midnight his day ends there.

There is no two- or three-year plan. "David Sweeney, Kevin Flynn and Liam Ryan have been there for 10 years. They don't need to be hearing about two- or three-year plans. In hurling it's always the here and now." The only target was to beat Antrim. Now the target is to beat Wexford. Win that and the target will be to win the Leinster final. He never thought he'd hear himself say this but yes, they're taking it one game at a time. And he knows that a little luck won't go astray. He saw Dermot Earley on TV the other night talking about how most things were right in the Kildare set-up but that they still might need some luck. Daly didn't have to be told. Gaelic Grounds 1995. Seánie McMahon, Ollie Baker, sideline cut, goal, breakthrough.

He relied on his selectors Vincent Teehan, Ciaran Hetherton and Richie Stakelum to draw up the initial panel. The first few drills at training, guys were doing them at their own pace – and not a bad pace either. But then Daly decided the tempo had to be upped and stepped in to crack the whip. Cue considerable shock and awe from his new charges. They soon got the message. In training they dive in.

There's another reason for this. If he harbours one small regret from his spell with Clare, the outcome of the 2005 and 2006 All Ireland semi-finals apart, it's that he probably wasn't quite as ruthless on the training field as he should have been ("Brian Cody is privileged in that way"). Not that he required an inordinately big stick, because in the Lohans and the Lynches and the McMahons he was blessed as any manager could be for leaders and warriors. Yet there were always two or three who'd let their man clear the ball or score, two or three who Daly allowed to suck a little of the oxygen out of the atmosphere. He will not make the same mistake again. He told the Dublin players early on that he wanted lads who were willing to go hard, to dive in, to be honest with themselves and with each other. And if they weren't willing, he added, he'd go out and find a few 18-year-olds who were.

The joint-venture's first league campaign went as well as could have been expected. From the outset the management placed the emphasis on performance rather than on results. On competing well, on matching the big guns, on going to places like Semple Stadium and the Gaelic Grounds and emerging with honour and confidence intact. In hindsight, Daly muses, had they concentrated on results instead of performances they might have pulled out another win, might even – with some luck – have finished in the top two. But against Tipperary and Kilkenny they hung in there when at times it looked as though they might be blown away. For Year One, it more than sufficed.

Physically, he believes, they're big enough. Mentally, he knows, they have not yet been through the fire and come out the other side, a tempering they'll have to experience in order to learn how to become winners. Give him a euro for everyone who's asked him if he sees any similarities between the Dublin of 2009 and the Clare of 1995 and he'd be living in Monte Carlo. He points to one significant difference. By the eve of the 1995 championship Clare had contested that year's league final, had contested the previous two Munster finals and had beaten Cork, Tipperary and Limerick along the way. "These guys haven't beaten anyone."

But that will come. It did for Daly the player. "All I can say is that I was in a way better frame of mind walking into the 1995 Munster final than I'd been walking into the 1994 Munster final, and I was in a better frame of mind for '94 than I'd been for '93. You have to live through these things first."

He quotes a favourite saying of Seánie Mac's from their campaign days. "Take a good look in the mirror on the Sunday morning and ask yourself, are you ready for this?" It's Sunday morning. Are the Dublin hurlers ready for this? Of one thing we can be sure. Their manager is.

emcevoy@tribune.ie