THE DUBS JUST LOOK UNSTOPPABLE

Battlezones: Where today’s 130th All Ireland final will be won, lost... or drawn

IT’S not Jim Gavin’s way to intentionally come out with a line designed to send a chill through the opposition but he managed it this week.

It was packaged as a mere soundbite for the radio but if Mayo blood was running through my veins, it would have sounded quite menacing.

Recalling last year’s drawn and replayed finals, Gavin claimed that Dublin had ‘stumbled over the line’ to win the All-Ireland.

How you absorb that line depends on how prejudiced your ears are.

You could treat it as arrogance in that it did not afford Mayo due credit for the effort they invested in forcing them to stumble in the first place.

You could categorise it as being blasé about his team’s serial success, in that All-Irelands are there to be won and it really does not matter whether you leap like a gazelle over the winning line or belly flop over the damn thing.

Gavin was offering us a rare glimpse inside a mind that is well-guarded by a cautious tongue and he reminded us that Dublin are not just striving for excellence, they demand it.

If you want one difference in approach to today’s All-Ireland, that’s the one staring you in the face.

Mayo will come knowing that they need to deliver the performance of their football lives to win Sam; Dublin expect to deliver that performance because that is where Gavin has long set the bar.

Good is not good enough, they have to be great because anything less is a betrayal of everything for which this group stands.

I won’t keep you waiting for the final paragraph, but that is just one of the reasons why Dublin will become the first team in 31 years to complete football’s three-in-a-row today.

I am not summarily dismissing Mayo’s chances; I was foolish enough to write them off in mid-summer but they came steam-rolling back to remind us that they are one of the most honest and courageous teams of all time, and I don’t mean that in a patronising way.

Those qualities give them a real shot today; we know that because they have troubled this Dublin team like no other has managed over the past two years.

Can they do it? Of course, they can. It will need certain things to happen, they have got to go after Stephen Cluxton’s kick-outs but not in the manic fashion they did in 2013, when they emptied themselves going man on man.

They have to push up on set-plays with a full court press and recreate the kind of chaos which infected Cluxton’s game for a period last year against Kerry, and in the closing minutes of their own drawn semi-final with the Dubs in 2015.

They have to remind the Dublin rookies – Con O’Callaghan in particular – that this is football on a whole different and brutish level, and again that is doable because it is a characteristic of this Mayo team that they afford you little time on the ball.

They have got to protect the middle third by matching Dublin’s mobility which can be achieved but only through a change in personnel which would necessitate starting with Patrick Durcan.

They not only need to get a big game out of Aidan O’Shea but they need to tease that performance out by giving him a defined role.

In my eyes that role is simple. Play him at full-forward because the defender in me tells me that this is the last place Dublin wants to see him.

Apart from the threat he will present, playing him there will dictate how Dublin set-up. It will mean that Cian O’Sullivan would have to sit in front of O’Shea and it would also demand that one of the Dublin midfielders – James McCarthy – may have to drop into the number six slot.

That’s how they set up against Kieran Donaghy and while it took us time to work it out, it also impacted on their attacking fluency. But here’s the thing, Mayo can get all that right and that still earns them only a shot at winning this.

And Dublin? Well, they pretty much just have to be their usual excellent selves. Of course, they have questions. Like: what to do with Diarmuid Connolly?

It rhymes so much with 2008 when I was part of the last team to go chasing a three-in-a-row, and we were undoubtedly distracted and damaged by the suspension of Paul Galvin.

I don’t think it is as big as an issue for Dublin, because such is the depth of options that they don’t have to lean as heavily on one player. Connolly will see game-time, either way, and whether he starts or not, Mayo will be spooked.

Dublin’s gift is that they can adapt − if you want an arm-wrestle, they will just roll up their sleeves.

If you want to take them on in a shoot-out, they will riddle you for fun.

The great temptation when looking at this game is to over-complicate it, but there is an obvious truth that has not changed in the three weeks since the semi-finals.

Mayo have some great players and a lot of good ones, Dublin have greater players and a hell of a lot more good ones.

When this game hits 50 minutes today and Mayo reach into the bench for Stephen Coen, Jim Gavin will do likewise and God knows what he will produce. It could be Connolly, Bernard Brogan Kevin McMenamon, Michael Darragh Macauley, Eoghan O’Gara... who knows.

But here is something we do know. When that call comes they will be expected to perform because that is what is demanded of them.

Dublin to win.