Impressive Dublin show dominance once again
Blues in rude health with decider in sight as Galway left to fret over drop
A RESULT that revealed little that we did not already know.
Dublin are in rude health and have one foot in a first Allianz League final in four years, while Galway will be left to fret about their Division 1 status, although they should have enough banked to probably to see it through.
After that, you can take as little or as much as you want from a result that has become as regular as the drowning of the shamrock on St Patrick’s weekend.
It is 14 years since Galway last beat Dublin in a competitive game of ball and since eking out a draw against them in the spring of 2018, this amounted to a sixth straight loss.
Even allowing for that considerable back catalogue of misery, through Galway eyes — and pretty much everyone else’s as well — this was as menacing as any that have gone before.
This was Dublin as far removed as is possible from the laboratory like conditions of the foot perfect Croke Park pitch they call home; Salthill on a typically squally Salthill afternoon, sauced with driving rain and an oil slick pitch that made footing a challenge.
And, yet, this is how the champions responded, reeling off numbers that made a mockery out of that challenge, scoring 22 points and kicking just one wide.
No doubt, given the culture that drives them, Con O’Callaghan will park the 0-9 — including 0-3 from play and another from a mark — he scored and chastise himself for being responsible for that solitary errant kick.
When the inevitable reference was made post match by Dessie Farrell on elements they need to work on, he had the good manners to keep the post-it pad note in his pocket. OK, there is context in that this is still the league and they were hosted by a Galway team that were more a paler shade of maroon.
Damien Comer, Shane Walsh, Cillan McDaid, Matthew Tierney, Liam Silke, and, after his lastminute withdrawal, Sean Kelly were all unavailable but rather than that being some kind of comfort blanket for Padraic Joyce, it has morphed into a serious concern.
After all, they head out on the Championship road in three weeks and with that many fitness issues hanging over key personnel, the wonder is whether they will travel by bus or ambulance. It has forced Joyce’s hand to a point, and it has facilitated the promotion of Cillian Ó Curraoin, who impressed once more kicking 0-8, with 0-3 coming from play, but the core truth — and it is one they have tested in the past — even at full strength, Galway are not good enough to beat Dublin. Perhaps, no one is.
In his post-match interview Farrell claimed: ‘Over the last three years, we have been working hard on different aspects of our game, changing things up slightly and it takes time and obviously last year you could see some of it come to fruition but we are definitely still working on those principles we are going after and we after definitely not there yet, it will take more time.’
The inference is that they were someway from the envisaged finished product while winning last year’s Sam Maguire.
They are certainly closer to it now. The resurgence in the form of Ciaran Kilkenny and Niall Scully is largely down to that work, with the game-plan where Dublin played safety-first football to beat the blanket swapped now for a more aggressive strategy where they just take a knife to it and slice it open,
Instead of pass, pass, now it is drive and run, pass and kick.
Playing into the wind here, Dublin were in control at half-time as they led by 0-10 to 0-6 in a first half in which their dominance
was only undermined by a distracted second quarter when their custody of possession was challenged by the carelessness of their handling.
Ears reddened, they revealed their new-look selves in the third quarter, Ross McGarry running onto Brian Howard’s exquisite 30metre diagonal punt pass to squeeze a point, while six minutes later Ciaran Kilkenny, no longer playing the role of point guard he assumed under Jim Gavin, burst through along the end line to punch a point.
They were just two points but they illustrate the sense that what Farrell has been working on is to ensure that the days when Dublin’s rehearsed attacking play wore teams down is now being replaced by a more instinctive and expressive game-plan, cemented in the absolute belief that they have got more good and great players than any other team in the land.
Just to underline that point, Farrell could have been accused of decadence in how he employed his bench, bringing on Jack McCaffrey
and Paul Mannion in the second half, with just the 13 All-Ireland medals and six AllStars between them.
And while others have goalkeeping options, Dublin have adopted the Russian Doll model for what is not considered the game’s key position.
David O’Hanlon has probably done enough all season to make the team of the league as goalkeeper, but he was replaced yesterday by Evan Comerford, who with his first touch of the new season dispatched a laser like 50 metre restart that ended with the excellent Sean Bugler kicking the first of his three points.
And, of course, we all know who is up next after that
Be afraid. Be very afraid.