Quiet man Goggins silences the critics

TOMMY LYONS couldn’t resist. Dublin had just demolished Donegal and he was in particularly jocular mood. His captain, whose face had adorned the media dart board in the immediate aftermath of the drawn game, had a stormer.

The Dublin manager wondered aloud what the gathering hacks had to say about Coman Goggins now.

Nervous laughter was the only murmur. After his five points the first day, Adrian Sweeney’s every step was shadowed in the replay. To take the pressure off his captain, Lyons played a ruse on the public. Peadar Andrews was handed the number four shirt, Goggins moved out to the wing. Like most things Lyons has tried this summer, it worked a treat.