You can’t play with any fear against Dublin, Conor McManus warns

By Brendan O’Brien

Conor McManus has has seen a change in Dublin this season but the first principle when plotting their downfall is the same now as it ever was.

The Monaghan attacker, like most observers, sees copious evidence of a more “methodical” approach from Jim Gavin’s troops in recent months.

He sees an outfit that is just as content to suffocate an opponent in the final quarter as it is to swarm all over them and rack up the scores.

None of which will matter to Tyrone if they take a misstep early on.

“Well, they’re going to have to stop Dublin getting off to a quick start,” said McManus.

If you’re playing catch-up with Dublin in Croke Park for 60 minutes, it’s a long, long day. First and foremost Tyrone are going to have to make it competitive to half-time. Whatever they spring after that, be it subs or whatever approach they take, they’re definitely going to have to keep things tight in the first-half and not let the game away from them. They’ll not need anybody to tell them that.

Mickey Harte’s charges fell to a bruising 12-point defeat to Dublin in last year’s semi-final after an early Con O’Callaghan goal sucked the oxygen out of a game and a Tyrone challenge that had been inflated for weeks.

McManus though knows that even a positive start only goes so far, too.

Scroll back three more years and Malachy O’Rourke’s men had navigated the first quarter of another last eight tie against Dublin with a one-point advantage before the concession of a devastating burst of 2-1 inside four minutes.

McManus doesn’t play down the task awaiting Tyrone this Sunday but he hasn’t seen Dublin firing on all cylinders as of yet this summer.

This Dublin team doesn’t seem to go after you as much as maybe that team a couple of years ago. That Dublin team a couple of years ago, when you had (Bernard) Brogan on top of his game, Diarmuid Connolly … they could beat you in five minutes and the game was over.

“And I know they did that last year against Tyrone in the semi-final, but this year, in particular, they don’t seem to be really going after teams as much as they were. It seems to be nearly more methodical than in the past.”

The results have remained much the same. Monaghan remain the only team to beat Dublin in league or championship this year, their one-point win in the last round of the league stages echoing Kerry’s victory by the same margin in the Allianz Division One decider of 2017.

The more recent of those results was claimed in what was effectively a dead rubber. Dublin had already qualified for the final and Gavin used the occasion — as he did again against Roscommon in the Super 8s — to give some air time to a bunch of rarely heard voices on the panel.

“You can’t play with any fear against Dublin, because if you do that they’ll swarm all over you,” said McManus. “And, as I said, they can beat you in five or 10 minutes. You just really have to make it competitive for them throughout the whole game and not sit back and make it easy for them.”

Easier said than done.