Will a different Dublin side deliver?

PERFORMANCES and results... the new mantras of the GAA world assail the ear as if the top coaches in the game have now ransacked the language of the market. How many times since the championship started, only a few short weeks ago, have we heard the managers’ cant of asking their team for a performance and expecting the scoreboard to “look after itself”?

Dublin shimmy in from the sidelines for their Leinster championship bow against Laois this weekend with Pat Gilroy’s words from the midweek press conference ringing in their ears — “at the end of the day, it is all about results for us”. If this is to herald a new era of an even more conservative Dublin, where the grinding out of marginal victories becomes the norm, then we’ve just heard our hopes of being entertained from here until the end of the Leinster championship fritter away.

It seems the harsh lessons learned during the latter stages of the league final are having a bigger bearing on Dublin’s mindset than they should have. The loose ends from the final fade-out are still there, exposed and raw, but to radically alter the way they play the game would be a drastic overreaction on Dublin’s part.