ONCE AGAIN
Faithful depart but Farrell wants more from Dubs KEANE
For now, Dublin can’t do a whole pile more than what they’re doing. They beat Meath by 16 points in the quarter-final and there were 20 points between the teams at the end of this one.
Slick
That margin flattered Dublin a little as they tagged on 1-5 in garbage time when the game was long since up.
Basquel’s goal didn’t arrive until stoppage time but it was still a strong and slick performance overall, full of power and precision.
Farrell said:“When the game is sort of done and dusted, it’s easy to default back to minding your own house or looking after your own agenda, or just conserving energy and not bursting a gut for your team-mates. But by and large we didn’t see much of that, so that was encouraging.”
Farrell handed last year’s All-Ireland winning captain James McCarthy his first start of 2024.
It meant that they lined out with their nine-time AllIreland medallists - McCarthy, Mick Fitzsimons and Stephen Cluxton - for the first time since last July’s final.
There was no Jack McCaffrey though and if the challenge in the All-Ireland series really is as great as Farrell expects, they may need the Clontarf flier.
As things stand, he has only featured once, as a sub, since Round 2 of the league.
Farrell said: “He’s close, he just maybe wasn’t ready for this one but he’s very close,.”
Dublin should have a full deck to choose from then when they face up to Louth again on May 12.
That will pit two Dublin legends against eachother on the sideline, Farrell and Ger Brennan.
Farrell said:“You can see what he’s doing with Louth, even in the short time this season. He’s trying to move on their performance to another level. Some of the elements that they’ve displayed to date shows us quite a nuanced sophistication about what they’re doing.”
Offaly gave it their best effort for as long as they could but from the moment O’Callaghan netted in the 18th minute, it looked a done deal.
Dublin led 1-5 to 0-2 at that stage - yet seemed to be just finding their feet in the game.
The disparity between the
DECLAN Kelly says his Offaly players will stick together and push hard for Tailteann Cup success.
The Faithful retained their Division 3 status in spring and then beat Laois in the Leinster quarterfinals to set up the Dublin date.
So even though they lost by 20 points and were dispatched to the second tier Tailteann Cup, boss Kelly wasn’t down.
He said the reality is that Dublin operate at ‘a different level’ and that Offaly haven’t faced anything like this ‘for a number of years’.
He was happy to shift his focus over to the Tailteann Cup, with the Faithful not yet getting beyond the last four in that competition.
Kelly is confident there’ll be no squad departures and said:“If we want to make real progress, and this is something we’ve said from day one — that if you’re coming in this year you’re seeing the year out.
“If you want to develop, you can’t come along and teams was highlighted in a couple of minutes midway through the first-half.
Keith O’Neill, Offaly’s best forward, struck a beauty from the outside of his right foot on the right wing. It was his team’s first score after 16 minutes but Dublin responded with an almost casual score from Cormac Costello.
Sweeping
Soon after, O’Neill claimed an advanced mark in a similar spot on the right wing and curled over another great score.
Dublin won the next kickout and started a sweeping move that ended with Mannion feeding King Con for the opening goal.
Scores just came so much easier for Dublin who led 1-10 to 0-4 at half-time.
The one big positive for Offaly decide that I’m gone now, I’ll come back in September.
“You’re not going to develop, as a player. All we’ve asked them this year is to come in and we’ll pick a panel that will see the year out.”
Kelly said Offaly ‘haven’t grasped’ their Tailteann Cup opportunity in the last two years and urged the Faithful to do so.
The man who guided the county to All-Ireland U-20 success in 2021 hopes they can put the lessons gained from this Dublin defeat to good use.
He said:“This game showed us where you have to get to. Number one, if you give the ball away, and this is something we looked at after the firsthalf, we dropped a few short inside their 45-metre line and six of those balls ended up in scores down at the far end of the field.
“That just shows you, you’ll be punished very quickly at that level.”
was that they outscored Dublin 0-6 to 0-5 between the 41st and 66th minutes.
That was down to their determination not to throw in the towel and the quality of players like Lee Pearson and Dylan Hyland.
But there was still 12 points between them and Dublin nonchalantly reeled off 1-5 in the closing minutes.
Sub Lorcan O’Dell was among the late scorers while defender Sean MacMahon, who had a strong game overall and came bursting out of defence on several occasions with the ball, also pointed.
Basquel’s goal arrived in the 72nd minute and amounted to the final nail in Offaly’s coffin.
Farrell said: “To be fair to Offaly, they are a very young team. They are a team that are building for the future.”