He may be, by his own admission, a veteran but Craig Dias has no intention of moderating his all-action style as Kilmacud Crokes target a first All-Ireland title since 2009.
Crokes take on Padraig Pearses of Ballinasloe at Breffni Park in Cavan this evening as two of the country’s most physical and intense teams face off on neutral ground.
Midfielder Dias may have all but drawn the curtains on his intercounty career - ‘I think they need to be looking at young players’ - but the will to win at club level remains deeply ingrained.
Not that football is all-consuming: becoming a father, to baby Lola, late last year prompted Dias to take a step away from competitive football for a while.
A while soon turned into the best part of the year as he sat out Crokes’ league campaign and returned to action for the tail end of the Dublin Championship.
That break - as much as taking care of a newborn can be described as a break - allowed him the chance to recharge the batteries and come back renewed.
A relentless couple of years had taken their toll with a shock Leinster final defeat to Mullinalaghta partially offset by a recall to the Dublin panel under Dessie Farrell in 2020.
“This year, I've had a massive break. We played Ballymun in the semi-finals of Leinster [in September 2020] and then I had a baby,” Dias tells Dublin Live.
“I took time off and didn't come back until I think September last year. So it was almost a year without being on the training pitch or lacing my boots. That has definitely helped.
“The older you get, you just need to be a lot more conscious of how much energy you're expending throughout the year. It does catch up on you, especially in a campaign this long.
“Guys are going from August when championships start, and we're in the new year, so that’s five months lads are playing a championship match almost every second week.”
Anybody who watched the television coverage of the Leinster final win over debutants Naas earlier this month, a 0-14 to 0-7 win, will have heard the words ‘veteran Craig Dias’ many times.
It’s a tag the Stillorgan man may reluctantly have to take on though he points out Mark Vaughan - top scorer in the 2009 campaign - is still around and a few years older.
The forward probably won’t thank Dias for saying he’s seven years older (Vaughan is 36, five years older than Dias) but the maths won’t matter should they see their side to victory.
“I am getting to that age, where I’m kind of feeling the bones in the body, but I'm still enjoying it,” Dias says.
“I’m 31 and there are players coming up who are still in secondary school on the team who have a massive impact. So yeah, probably I am a veteran at this stage.”
To that end, Dias stresses that it’s much more about the entire matchday squad of 26 than the 15 who start the game, particularly against a side as physical as Pearses.
There are big similarities both in the way the teams play and the manner in which they’ve edged tough ties in county and provincial championships to date.
Dias picked out the hard-running Daly brothers, Conor, Ronan, and Lorcan, as a particular strength, along with the physically imposing forwards Paul Carey and Hubert Darcy.
“There’d be similarities in their campaign to ours - they had a few close encounters: Bridget’s, Knockmore and Mountbellew as well especially.
“They're a good side, they've different options in terms of how they're going to attack, the Dalys who can run the ball and [David] Murray as well.
“And then in the full forward line they’ve fleet-footed full forwards, big men in Carey and Darcy. So we're gonna have to negate different forms of attack.
“In defence, they're similar to Jude’s in that they’ll pack the defence and then break with pace.
“So we just have to figure out how we're going to break down and wear down their defense and get scores. We're gonna have to limit the amount of mistakes that we make.”
He adds: “You're looking at the squads more so than the starting 15. The standard benchmark is gone up a level or two.
“So there will be a noticeable step up. There will be a faster pace to it. Your mistakes will be punished.”
Dias was a surprise inclusion in one of Farrell’s early panels to face Donegal in the league in February 2020 but it proved shortlived as he made one appearance before being dropped.
And while Dias would never completely shut the door to another call-up, he believes Farrell has rightly opted to invest in youth as the Dubs look to rebuild.
“I think they need to be looking at younger players, impressionable players they can form and mould into into those winners. They’d be wasting time on a 31-year-old going back in.
“Unless they see something that I can add straight away, you know, there’s not going to be much development left in me at 31 years of age.
“I'm happy enough concentrating on Kilmacud Crokes. I get enough from this to appease that hunger that I have.”
