Dubl-in to the final... AGAIN
Dublin find their feet in second half to ease into another final
AN All-ireland semi-final is the best time to catch Dublin? Not anymore.
For the second year in succession, Dublin have stepped it up in the penultimate round and it threatened to be even more comprehensive than last year’s 12-point pummelling of Tyrone before Shane Walsh netted a late goal to save some of Galway’s blushes. Jim Gavin’s only SFC loss as Dublin manager came at
semi-final stage four years ago to Donegal and they’ve been vulnerable to Kerry on a couple of occasions and Mayo too at the same juncture, but this game was more in keeping with what we’ve become used to in the Leinster Championship. Galway had their moments in the first half but ultimately their undoing was the fact that their second goal came in the 74th minute when it could and should have been in the ninth or 12th. They were buoyed by a Damien Comer goal in the eighth minute as Stephen Cluxton hared needlessly off his line, allowing the Galway attacker to fist to the net but he should have had another after they disrupted the subsequent Dublin kickout. He could only shoot straight at Cluxton this time, however.
A few minutes later, Comer was felled by Jonny Cooper for a penalty but Cluxton saved well from Eamonn Brannigan and with Galway putting a set of wides alongside it in the same period, a brief one-point lead was as good as it got.
Nail those chances and it throws a lot of different questions at Dublin but, ultimately, Galway lacked the quality to seriously test the champions.
With Ian Burke slotting a couple of points and making a few more, Galway managed to stay in Dublin’s slipstream for the rest of the half, at the end of the which they trailed 1-9 to 1-7, but they were dropped in the third quarter before it descended into a rout.
Jack Mccaffrey brilliantly engineered Dublin’s goal in the 27th minute with a defencethe
splitting handpass to Niall Scully, who squared to Con O’callaghan to palm to the net.
Having struggled to scale the heights of 2017, it was more like it from O’callaghan, while Mccaffrey’s pace and tigerishness deflated Galway.
He won a pair of kickouts off Johnny Heaney in the second half, both leading to Dublin points in a period when Galway’s hopes of springing a surprise were terminated as they were punished on turnovers.
By contrast, Galway’s failure to seriously disrupt Dublin’s restarts left them chasing possession for much of the second half and they paid a price for that in the last quarter as the champions scored at will, Cormac Costello and Kevin Mcmanamon twisting the knife when introduced.
Mcmanamon’s second point in quick succession put Galway 12 clear in injury time before Walsh dribbled through and slotted past Cluxton for a consolation.
But there was still time for Paul Flynn to rattle the crossbar and Mcmanamon to hit the post on the rebound amid ironic cheers which might have demoralised Galway more than if Dublin had actually taken either of those chances.
There’s been undoubted progress for Galway this year but with eight- and nine-point defeats in the last two weekends, they’ve closed out yet another season with a whimper.
The modest attendance of 54,716 was the worst for an All-ireland semi-final involving Dublin since 52,606 watched them beat Cork in 1995.
There are a number of factors behind that, among them the short lead in to the game, the number of matches both counties have played of late and the Saturday evening throw-in time, but none of those would have prevented something close to a full house in the last 15 years or so where Dublin have been involved at this stage of the Championship.
The single biggest reason is the monotony that now surrounds the Dublin team given their dominance and, regardless of who faces them next month, there’ll be an inevitability about the outcome of an All-ireland football final that hasn’t been apparent since Mick O’dwyer’s Kerry team.
That’s exactly who they’ll seek to emulate next month when they bid for a fourth All-ireland title in succession.
irishsport@trinitymirror.com