Dubs’ midfield dominance silences critics

SELECTOR Brian Talty believes Dublin’s midfield dominance against Offaly was the perfect riposte to the critics who identified the partnership of Ciarán Whelan and Shane Ryan as their Achilles heel.

The Dublin centre-fielders endured a difficult afternoon in their first championship outing against Longford and only began to gain control against Laois when the unfortunate Padraic Clancy departed the field through injury.

Similar problems were predicted against Offaly’s Alan McNamee and Ciarán McManus in the Leinster final, but Dublin dominated in the air and swept up the majority of the breaking ball.

Paul Caffrey’s full-back line was also singled out as a possible area of concern for the champions but the last line held intact despite some dangerous probing from the dangerous Offaly duo of Niall McNamee and Thomas Deehan.

Said Talty: “We have quality players in those positions and the thing is for them to operate on the day. All these players are working hard on weaknesses. Anybody that runs down the likes of Ciarán Whelan or Shane Ryan should realise that these guys are experienced, talented players. They’ve been around a long, long time. They’ve seen some good times and some bad times. They’ve worked awful hard since the Longford game and we’re getting some very, very good performances out of the lads.”

Dublin are now favourites to lift the Sam Maguire with some bookmakers after seeing off the challenges of Laois and Offaly by a combined tally of 23 points and becoming the first team to retain the Leinster title in over a decade.

One club official in the capital described the scramble for tickets in the run up to last weekend’s game as the worst he could remember since the 1995 All-Ireland final.

That extraordinary level of interest will only get bigger between now and next month’s quarter-finals but Talty is confident that this Dublin side will be well able to handle the growing hype.

“The thing is that fellas are level-headed enough to realise it was good to achieve it. Two Leinsters back to back is great, it’s part of the achievement we wanted at the start of the year.

“The thing is, we’ve been in quarter-finals before. As Pillar said after the match, we’ll enjoy this feeling now and get back to thinking about the next match before too long.”

Kevin Bonner sat out the Leinster final with a foot injury he picked up in training but the St Brigid’s player is expected to recover from bad bruising long before the next fixture.

Caffrey has no injury worries after three championship games and their All-Ireland hopes were bolstered late on against Offaly when the talented trio of Collie Moran, Darren Magee and Stephen O’Shaughnessy were introduced.

“They’ve played all the matches in training and played with their club,” said Talty. “I think Stephen has a game with the club this week so their fitness is coming along all the time. It was good to see them get on towards the end (on Sunday).”