O’Neill got the balance right against the Dubs

IT’S hard to know what to do. It’s hard to know what we even want them to do. We tie ourselves in knots and contradictions such that if any team or any manager were to listen to us they’d be paralysed by indecision.

We want them to have a cut, to go for it and, yet, the minute they do and are – predictably enough – caught out we throw our eyes to heaven, tut tut and rather smugly wonder what they hell were they thinking. Where was the sweeper? Why wasn’t there more men back?

That’s the thing about this present Dublin team, you can’t do right for doing wrong against them. Pack the defence and they’ll find away around or through or over it regardless. Go for the jugular and they’ll go for yours and do so with a much sharper blade.

It’s hard to know what to do because there’s no one-size fits all approach. What’s good for a Carlow or a Laois won’t necessarily be good for a Westmeath or a Kildare. The only teams to consistently measure up to Dublin are Kerry and Mayo. For everybody else it’s a question of priorities and of best and worst case scenarios.

Nobody has been a realistic challenger to them in Leinster for years and years. The province’s minnows can’t truly believe they’re in with a shout, so they keep it tight and hope for the best. Damage limitation.

Westmeath – Division 4 but chafing at the notion they are minnows – had been there done that and not got any reward for it, save for keeping the score down (relatively speaking). Those guys knew that if they played the way they had in previous years against the Dubs, the result would be the same.

The definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, it was little surprise to hear that the Westmeath players were the drivers behind a decision to face up to the Dubs on their own terms.

Certainly it was brave. In hindsight perhaps it was even foolish – they suffered a thirty one point whopping – but on that score we’re not so sure. It felt more brave than foolish to us, after all what would Westmeath learn about themselves by playing a system they don’t want to play simply to avoid a pounding?

Again it comes back to what a devilishly needle to thread it is for most teams against the Dubs. In the build up to Sunday’s final Kildare manager Cian O’Neill feinted towards adopting a more defensive approach than the one he used against Meath to devastating effect in the semi-final.

Had O’Neill followed through on it nobody would have much criticised him for it. People would have recognised the bind he was in and the Realpolitik of the decision. Live to fight another day and all that.

Even to write that of a provincial final is a depressing thing, but that’s where we are with Dublin. They’re that far ahead. Except, of course, that O’Neill wasn’t as defeatist as all that. His feint in the build-up was just that, Kildare played their own game.

The Lillies left men up in attack. They played a progressive, offensive type of game and... they were still beaten comprehensively by the Dubs, but to focus on that would be to rather miss the point.

O’Neill wants to challenge Dublin’s dominance in Leinster. He wants Kildare to beat them, to do that a form of what Tom Cribben – who is a good manager – employed against Dublin in last year’s Leinster final simply won’t do.

To challenge Dublin you need to play the type of progressive, offensive football that he seems intent on developing in Kildare. The best way to stress test their system was to expose it to the best in the business.

Having done so flaws were inevitably highlighted. Dublin’s two first half goals will feature heavily in O’Neill’s video analysis of the game this week, but the former Kerry, Mayo and Tipperary coach will know that it was an invaluable learning experience for his defenders.

Watching back O’Neill will surely see far more positives than negatives. If it was a gamble to play as they did, it was one which paid off for Kildare. The way they bounced back from the goals. The way they pushed up on Stephen Cluxton’s kick-outs. The scores they hit. The margin they kept it to in the end.

By the end of the game there was much more reason to believe that Kildare would one day – and not too far away – be genuinely capable of challenging Dublin and that despite many of us throwing our hands up in despair as the Dublin goals rained in. They’ve got guts this Kildare team.

O’Neill, then, was vindicated. Even in defeat Kildare’s momentum remains unchecked. What was right for Westmeath last year wasn’t right for Kildare this year. There’s no single answer to the questions posed by Dublin.

We’d all do well to remember that in the future before making too general a set of declarative statements.