DUBLIN LAST THE PACE NO MATTER HOW PUNISHING Final-quarter masters Dublin likely to meet a match in Mayo
THOSE that came to Parnell Park last Tuesday afternoon, hoping to get some insight into what makes Jim Gavin tick were left disappointed. The Dublin manager greeted the assembled media in his usual polite manner ahead of the All-Ireland football final but he never once dropped his guard.
So, nobody was any the wiser to what motivates one of the most successful managers in GAA history, what drives a man who has lost one Championship game in four seasons and is on the cusp of joining Kevin Heffernan in the record books as a three-time AllIreland winning manager.
If Gavin remains an enigma, he did, in his careful and measured way, acknowledge that one of the things which is making his side truly great when touching upon their growing prowess of overrunning their opponents in the final quarter of matches.
‘On any given day, there is only a bounce of the ball between the top Division 1 teams,’ Gavin said to assembled reporters. ‘You saw it the last day against Kerry and you have seen it any time that we have played Mayo. We never take anything for granted. You don’t deserve anything. You have to go out and earn the right for your victory. Most of our games in the last while have been won in the last quarter.’
As usual, Gavin was understating things. Dublin don’t just win games in the last quarter, they obliterate teams. A combination of their superior conditioning and superior bench mean that teams are gassed as they enter the final straight with the reigning All-Ireland champions.
When they out-scored Kerry 0-7 to 0-3 in the final 18 minutes of last month’s classic semi-final, they were simply maintaining one of the most noticeable aspects of Gavin’s reign. In 19 of the 22 Championship games on his watch, they have out-scored their opponents over the final quarter.
In the 2014 All-Ireland semifinal defeat, Donegal only scored one more point in the final 18 minutes. Fermanagh did hit them for two goals in the All-Ireland quarter-final last year, but Dublin were well out the gap by that stage and Mayo out-scored them in the mad final few minutes of last year’s drawn semi-final, when Stephen Cluxton lost his composure.
Being able to spring Paul Mannion off the bench as they did in August’s quarter-final win over Donegal certainly helps to overrun teams with tired minds and bodies, but key to this is the conditioning of the Dublin players. They are arguably the fittest team in GAA history – and each of their players can last the pace, no matter how punishing.
But as former Mayo manager James Horan points out, they will face the one team in the country who may just be as fit as them next weekend. ‘They are the two best-conditioned teams in the history of Gaelic Games, in my opinion,’ Horan feels. ‘And I absolutely feel that Mayo will be strong right to the end. I would be very confident of that.’
Former Dublin forward Ray Cosgrove echoes Horan’s sentiments and draws on the drawn semi-final last year as evidence. ‘When you look at that drawn game, they were four points down and they were still driving at Dublin coming into injurytime. Physically, I don’t think any other team could do that. So definitely, in physical stakes, they will be a match for Dublin.’
Amid the welter of statistics that cropped up following Dublin’s fourth successive Championship win over Kerry, one underlined the dominance. In those games, from the 53rd minute on, the Dubs have outscored Kerry by 3-17 to 0-11. If last April’s League final is taken into account, that scoreline stretches to 5-20 to 0-11.
On seven occasions, they have restricted opponents to just 0-2 from the 53rd minute onwards, including Mayo in last year’s replay while at the same time hitting 3-3. Three times in the final quarter, they held the opposition to a solitary point, including Kerry in last year’s All-Ireland final. They’ve even managed to hold a team scoreless in that period – Westmeath in this year’s Leinster final (they did the same to Kerry in April’s League final).
And while they have struck for 18 late goals in the 22 Championship games under Gavin, shutting out goals in the closing stages is one reason why they can finish games so strongly. In Gavin’s first two seasons, they conceded just one late goal in 11 Championship games when Wexford’s Daithí Watters grabbed a consolation in the 2014 Leinster semifinal.
In the past two seasons, with the exception of those crazy final few minutes against Fermanagh when both Tomás Corrigan and Seán Quigley (rather controversially) found the net, Cillian O’Connor’s strike in last year’s drawn semi-final was the only time they have conceded a goal when the clock has gone beyond 53 minutes – and O’Connor’ netted from the penalty spot. In 2012, when Donegal won the All-Ireland, they became known as a ‘third-quarter’ team, a reference to how they were mirroring the manner in which Aussie Rules teams put such emphasis on the period immediately after half-time. Under Brian Cody, Kilkenny also developed a reputation for killing teams off directly after the break, which was why Tipperary worked so hard early in the second half last weekend. But this Dublin team are achieving their greatness in a different way. Even if teams attack them in the third quarter, they still know that they have the legs to keep going in the final quarter. Manager Gavin didn’t let the cards drop from the vicinity of his chest on Tuesday afternoon but he did concede that his team are killing teams off in the last quarter of games. Next Sunday, though, they will meet the one team who have the conditioning and legs to stay the course with Dublin. They may have to find a different way to win, other than over-running them in the closing stages.