Fired-up Dublin can give Lyons a lift

PRESUMABLY it will take more than the return of charismatic manager Tommy Lyons to ensure Dublin footballers the victory in this evening’s Bank of Ireland football championship quarter-final replay in Croke Park.

It would be a victory they had been generally expected to manage 12 days ago. From the players and selector Paul Caffrey, who took over Lyon's role for the day while he watched the game from his hospital room, there is a ready acknowledgment that he was missed.

Yet when it came to the crunch and Dublin conceded a three-point lead that they would have been expected to hold on to, it is doubtful if Lyons or any of the other top coaches around could have done anything to prevent it. At the precise stage of the game when Dublin enjoyed the lead six minutes from the end of normal time, following the second of Ray Cosgrove's goals their real character was put to the test. But it was Donegal, and Adrian Sweeney specifically with his two late scores, who responded best.