More than one way to top charts
A little like the anxious fans of an idiosyncratic indie band on the cusp of a break-through, Dublin’s supporters will be beginning to worry about how their team’s experimental attacking football will fare on a bigger stage.
Will their exciting and counter intuitive approach to the modern game survive the move, or will they be forced to compromise their principles to prove they have real crossover appeal? The mainstream can harden even the purest of hearts, but there is no real evidence to support the common suspicion that Dublin are about to sell their soul to reach number one.
It’s a familiar argument by now that the harsh reality of summer football will put paid to the joys of spring, but what’s to say that Jim Gavin won’t stick as rigidly to his attacking philosophy as Jim McGuinness has stuck to his defensive blueprint? Who knows, but Dublin have in the past been willing to change course after a period of league experimentation. Just three years ago, following their best league campaign in a decade, it took a championship game against Wexford for Pat Gilroy to decide Dublin needed to change their ways.
The defensive system that had performed so admirably in the league took a serious hammering against Wexford and by the time they played Meath a few weeks later they had switched to a more orthodox alignment. They leaked five goals in an acknowledged dam-burst moment for many among this evening’s group.
By changing horse mid-stream, Gilroy’s Dublin were taught a valuable lesson that was absorbed and used to win an All-Ireland the following season — don’t tinker with a well-worked formula and always have the courage of your convictions.
This time around, Gavin has everybody telling him that they won’t be getting a better or cheaper lesson than they got against Tyrone in the league final a month ago.
In that game Dublin found once again that they tend to struggle when the opposition cracks Stephen Cluxton’s kick-out, as Tyrone did early and often. It also emerged that Jack McCaffrey, for all his pace, is uncomfortable on the back foot and Mark Donnelly took him to school for the first big lesson of his career. Dublin might suspect, too, that the other youngster, Paul Mannion, is unlikely to meet as many naive defenders as he encountered during the league.
All of these are cheap but valuable lessons, but it must be remembered that Cluxton was missing his most valuable outlet and the man with whom he has the greatest understanding, the outstanding Paul Flynn. It is worth noting, too, that McCaffrey put a shaky performance behind him to put Dublin two points up on the 70-minute mark and Mannion managed to kick three points from play, and in doing so showed more artisan qualities than would be expected of a 19-year-old playing in a national final.
Whatever the lessons Dublin took from the league, they came at the right time of the year and are unlikely to go unheeded. We first make our habits and then our habits make us, as the poet John Dryden would have it.
As they face the challenge of Westmeath this evening, Dublin would probably settle for finding some stability at the back after Rory O’Carroll’s prolonged absences in the league. They will also be hoping to find a proper midfield partner for Michael Darragh Macauley, notwithstanding Cian O’Sullivan’s excellence there at times during the spring.
That’s not to say they don’t have issues to address in attack, too. Diarmuid Connolly still gets too distracted, Bernard Brogan isn’t the quicksilver handful of old, and for all their expansive play they have yet to find someone to pick holes from the half-forward line like Alan Brogan did. Ciarán Kilkenny’s battle with Paul Sharry will reveal more.
Whatever about the encouragement to be taken from their performance against Tyrone, Gavin’s Dublin have yet to prove they can kick the type of point where you have to wait for the opening, receive the ball while virtually stationary and kick under pressure from the same position.
Perhaps that’s because, their draw with Donegal in Ballybofey excepted, they haven’t encountered that type of game yet, although I feel the day is drawing close.
Maybe Westmeath will play a version of Donegal-lite this evening by packing up the defence and aiming to replicate the implacability and the intensity of the Donegal game for as long as they can.
Maybe Dessie Doolan and Denis Glennon have one last great day in them as a double act. Maybe Gary Connaughton can put two successive doses of the yips behind him to remind us what made him a great keeper in the first place. Maybe every one of Ger Egan’s long, raking kick-passes will find their target as they did a fortnight ago against Carlow. Maybe John Heslin will produce the dominant 70 minutes his fledgling career has been threatening. Maybe Dublin will find young Kieran Martin as unpredictable as others have this season and maybe his remarkable goal rush will continue.
That’s a whole lot of maybes for a team who conceded a goal and three points in injury time the last time we saw them in Croke Park.
There are genuine causes for concern about the suitability of Dublin’s game plan to the rigours of championship football, but perhaps the aura of invincibility that has grown around Donegal has led to too much consensus about what it takes to win an All-Ireland.
Open, attacking football may not be the style du jour, but we should remember that there’s always more than one way to reach number one.
Dublin to continue with their attacking and winning ways.
