Dean Rock is an Irish Gaelic footballer. He has been a member of the Dublin senior team since 2013. He has represented Dublin at all grades, Minor, Junior, U21 and Senior. He is a noted free taker and scored the winning point from a free in the 2017 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final. Colm O'Rourke has described Rock as "statistically the best free taker that has been to Croke Park".
He simultaneously came to prominence at juvenile and underage levels with the Ballymun Kickhams club before making his debut with the senior team in 2008. Since then he has won one Leinster medal and one county senior championship medal.
Inter-county
Minor and under-21
Rock made his debut on the inter-county scene when he was selected for the Dublin minor team. After an unsuccessful tenure with the minor team, he later won an All-Ireland medal as part of the Dublin under-21 team.
Rock made his senior debut during the 2012 league when he was introduced as a substitute against Donegal in March. He made his championship debut the following year against Westmeath. Since then he has won six All-Ireland medals, beginning with his first title in 2013 and followed by five successive championships from 2015 to 2019. Rock has also won six Leinster medals and five National League medals. Rock has been awarded two All Star awards for Dublin in 2017 and 2016, when he finished the season as top scorer of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. Rock only started his first league match for Dublin in 2015, after which he participated in 63 consecutive league and championship games. He is noted for his taking Dublin's frees, while attaining hitherto unimaginable levels of accuracy. Having spent to years as a substitute in 2013 and 2014, he studied placed-ball kicking and worked kicking expert Dave Alred, as he revealed in 2017. In the 2016 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final replay defeat of Mayo, Rock scored 0–9. In the 2017 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final defeat of Mayo, Rock scored 0–7, including the late winner through Lee Keegan's thrown GPS pack. In the 2018 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final defeat of Tyrone, Rock also scored 0–7. Rock's fifth point of the drawn 2019 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was his 411th point for his county in league and championship in his 88th game. Combined with his 14 Dublin goals, Rock passed Bernard Brogan the Second to become the second highest scorer ever in Dublin football. Unusually, Rock has done this mostly through points; he has the lowest goal-scoring record among the top ten and achieved the feat while making fewer appearances than those around him in the all-time list.
