Dubs bench can be the difference once again

ONE team is chasing a three-in-a-row tomorrow and yet it’s the opposition who come to Croke Park weighed down by history. Maybe there was something in Dublin’s favour in Kerry book-ending a 36-match match unbeaten streak in the League and Championship in the National League final because it’s easy to imagine the hype if that run was still intact coming into this decider. The worry for Mayo is that Dublin whip up the perfect storm on All-Ireland final day, the one box this team wants to tick. It says everything about the character and resilience of Dublin that the four All-Irelands have been somewhat of a grind, last year the prime example. Jim Gavin wasn’t trying to insult Mayo supporters when he said his team didn’t perform to their standards 12 months ago — for the challengers, the drawn game was the one that really got away. That was the day to bridge the gap to 1951. Former manager James Horan suggested it will suit Mayo to bring ‘chaos’ to the match and he’s right. The more this is a bruising, spiky affair which teeters on the brink, the more chance Mayo have of forcing Dublin into the sort of struggle they haven’t had to deal with all year long. Between own-goals, Lee Keegan’s black card, John Small escaping a similar fate for Dublin — Mayo can argue that the breaks just didn’t go their way between the drawn game and replay in 2016. So this time they need to press all of Dublin’s buttons again — starting with slowing down and interrupting the flow of Stephen Cluxton’s restarts — and maybe the big black card, red card or penalty call falls in their favour. No bunch of players deserve a Celtic Cross more than this generation of Mayo players. It’s just that a Dublin team with only one Championship defeat in the five summers on Jim Gavin’s watch tend to remove any element of chance — they seem to easily remove any sense of sentiment from the equation too. The star-studded bench, particularly in terms of match-winning scoring options, is the most obvious aspect that separates the two teams. Bernard Brogan — the veteran and skilled score-taker — didn’t even make it off the bench against Tyrone. Just like last year’s replay, it’s not a stretch to see the bench being the difference again.