O’Carroll’s absence won’t shake Dublin’s diminutive backline
TYPICALLY, Jim Gavin was giving little away in the Gibson Hotel on Thursday morning. Probed about the two goals that Laois had scored in Nowlan Park – the first time that Dublin had conceded more than one goal in a Leinster championship game under his watch – Gavin pointed out that Laois were very spirited in the second half and created their goal-scoring chances well.
If the way Donie Kingston had troubled his full-back line was keeping Gavin up at night, he certainly wasn’t going to say it publicly. Instead, this was a test of his players’ character. And an opportunity for his side to develop even further.
‘I think it is an opportunity for us to learn, to grow, to put a bit of resilence into our game. It’s an experience that we will come out stronger for,’ Gavin explained. ‘It was a slip of concentration and against a side like Laois, we knew they would punish us if we let them. Credit probably wasn’t given to Laois and how they applied themselves in that game and the manner in which they took their goals.’
There was a feeling listening to Gavin that the lessons had been absorbed. And conceding to a swift counter-attack – similar to how Donegal scored three goals in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final – is not likely to happen again this summer.
But Kingston’s power and size highlighted an area that may yet come back to haunt Dublin and that has been crystallised by Rory O’Carroll’s decision to go travelling – a lack of height in the full-back line. Jonny Cooper sighed when the issue was broached at a press briefing last week.
‘The usual, Dublin are small in the full-back line and we are suspect at high balls. I am certainly well used to hearing it at this stage, and so are the other lads.
‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s a threat that the opposition can use on any given day, especially with Rory not there. That challenge was always there for us but it is no more difficult now that Rory isn’t there.’
Aside from his size, O’Carroll’s no-nonsense approach to fullback play was key to how Dublin defended in the past couple of years. In an era when some fullbacks like to go forward and join the attack, O’Carroll remains firmly wedded to his patrol at the edge of the square. It gave the entire Dublin team a degree of comfort.
If Gavin wanted to compensate for a lack of size in the full-back line, he could always return Denis Bastick to his original home. The 35-yearold veteran played all his underage football on the edge of the square and even began his Dublin senior career in that position.
The last game he played fullback was the 2009 All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Kerry, when Pat Gilroy’s startled earwigs lost by 17 points.
‘I moved out to midfield after that,’ Bastick recalls. ‘So it has been a while since I played there.
‘It’s an unique position and there are only certain guys who are actually really good at it because it is such a difficult position but we have got guys who are able to go in and do jobs.’
Philly McMahon would be the prime example of that, after the way he silenced Aidan O’Shea over the course of two games in Croke Park last summer.
‘Philly is not your standard fullback in terms of height but he was able to manage those big guys last year.
‘And, obviously, if they put two or three big men in around the square, we will need more than one. But having said that, no matter how many big men are in there, if you stop the ball going in, it doesn’t matter if your opponent is seven foot tall, they won’t get a ball.
‘So our number one tactic is to prevent the ball going in there in the first place, rather than making sure that the big man is marked,’ Bastick says.
‘When you lose a character like Rory O’Carroll, who has been a rock for us, people might see it as a weakness. But if there is a big man standing there, and there is no ball going in, he can’t do anything with it.’
And perhaps that is Dublin’s best tactic when it comes to the weakness in their full-back line. Prevention is better than cure. They will simply mask any issue by not allowing teams to deliver high ball.
Nonetheless, it is not difficult to envisage Gavin and his backroom team sweating over what Donie Kingston did in Nowlan Park.
If they concede a couple more goals this afternoon against a Meath side that prefer to run rather than launch dropping ball, all of a sudden what has been held up as a vulnerability may become the biggest stumbling block to Dublin retaining their All-Ireland title.