The Irish Mail on Sunday

Tomás Ó Sé

Galway can offer the chasing pack hope against the Dubs

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THINGS are bad in the Kingdom when we are getting our laughs from gallows humour. When news broke last Sunday evening that Monaghan had beaten Dublin in Croke Park, it was greeted with high spirits. ‘They are finished now,’ said a pal, who usually has a healthy habit of seeing the glass half full, ‘and Jim Gavin will be gone by the end of the year.’

When the optimists are reduced to self-parody, you get a sense of just how Dublin have squeezed hope dry even in places where it always flowed freely.

That is why even though Galway will be playing for themselves today as they seek to win a first National League title in 37 years, they will also be playing for everyone else.

Belief was never an issue for the Kerry team I played on and while we had our troubles with Tyrone, it irritated rather than bowed us.

But what Dublin are doing now is different; it is relentless, year-onyear, competitio­n-on-competitio­n, and no belief system no matter how stout can insulate itself from that degree of sustained oppression.

That is why today, the handful of counties – and it does not extend beyond Mayo, Kerry, Tyrone and Galway themselves – who believe that if they are at their absolute best on a given day have a shot at beating Dublin will be watching close for little green shoots of hope.

Put it like this, if Dublin do their thing and tank Galway by eight to 10 points, this summer is done for me. The evidence would suggest that they have galloped even further ahead of the pack, and if they were to demolish the one team that has form on their side, a healthy grudge to feed off and a game plan which they know they can execute to a very high level, then what hope for the rest? None, I suspect, is the answer. If Dublin win in a canter here, the four-in-a-row will have a sense of inevitabil­ity about it and the conversati­on will turn to how the drive for five can somehow be stopped in its tracks.

Of course, in theory that could see the champions infected by complacenc­y but if they were vulnerable to that disease they would have caught it long before now.

Normally, I would not be of a mind to read too much into a game this early in the year but Dublin have changed all the rules of analysis.

Usually a team of their status would only be throwing shapes at this time of the season, but such is the pressure within the group for places that the players dare not idle. And those that do, well they may find themselves in some bother getting back in.

Inevitably a lot of focus for the past couple of weeks has centred on Diarmuid Connolly’s ongoing absence. Such is the tightness of the camp, we are none the wiser as to what is behind this, except for the obvious conclusion that there is more than meets the eye.

For the record, as great as this Dublin team is there is a still a need for a player of his exceptiona­l quality but if Connolly does not find a way back soon, he might just discover that there is no way back at all.

The team has moved on in the last couple of months, Brian Howard has the look of a player who will not be moved, Niall Scully is now more confident in his inter-county skin, Michael Darragh Macauley has gone back in time to his defining season in 2013, while even the exceptiona­l Brian Fenton is playing better now that in his launch year of 2016.

Then there are the constants – it is no coincidenc­e that Dublin failed to win their last two games in the absence of Stephen Cluxton, in front of him Jonny Cooper is as good as ever, while James McCarthy is swallowing half-acres with every stride.

That’s before we come to Ciaran Kilkenny, the player of the league, who Gavin has returned to the inside forward role which he thrived in as a minor to lethal effect.

And we have not got round to mentioning Dean Rock, or the fact that Paul Mannion is back to full-fitness, or that Con O’Callaghan will soon be back in the fold, while someday soon Jack McCaffery will complete his rehab from that cruciate injury.

That’s not even scratching the surface of the options which they possess, all of which is why hope is becoming an abstract concept for those chasing hard.

All of that said, I have a feeling today that Galway might just throw the pack a bone and it is not just a gut thing. This is a very good team blessed with the kind of pace that suits their counter-attacking game and will be playing on a Croke Park pitch which facilitate­s the jetheeled. On top of that they are not one dimensiona­l and Damian Comer can provide the kind of target that can test Dublin when they go direct, which is not something they will like particular­ly in the absence of Cian O’Sullivan.

And then there is the way matters finished up two weeks ago in Salthill; Galway’s satisfacti­on not just coming from a drawn game but from the knowledge they had crawled beneath Dublin’s skin by the end of it.

If Galway use that bit of needle the right way – not by becoming distracted into trying to start a running war but by rememberin­g Dublin’s discomfort when they were in their faces in Salthill – we might just get a contest here.

It is too big an ask to expect Galway to win, but it is setting the bar far too low to suggest that they could take the kind of hiding that Derry took four years ago and sent them into free-fall.

Galway are better than that but are they good enough to make this a contest to savour rather than another Dublin coronation?

Let’s hope so, because otherwise the summer could be over before it starts.

 ??  ?? LEAP OF FAITH: We need Galway to deliver
LEAP OF FAITH: We need Galway to deliver
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