Gilroy unfazed by ‘better’ Tyrone

PAT GILROY has conceded Tyrone are ‘a better team’ than his Dublin outfit and that beating them this weekend to reach the Allianz football league final is ‘not the be all and end all’.

Gilroy spoke in what many may interpret as defeatist tones at yesterday’s press conference ahead of the final round make or break tie.

But he moved quickly to nip that suggestion in the bud by claiming that, overall, the league has been a hugely positive experience for his evolving capital county squad.

The bottom line in qualification terms is that if they want to reach April 25 final they must defeat Tyrone in Omagh this Sunday which would also arrest an alarming run of form that’s yielded back-to-back losses.

Gilroy isn’t concerned about that bottom line though and maintains that as a vehicle for assessing new talent the league has been a major success.

According to him, that’s the real legacy of the campaign that people should reflect on, not whether or not they reach the decider.

“That’s certainly not the be all and end all for us,” said Gilroy. “If we happen to fall into the final that’s fine but we’ve said all along that the league was about us needing to try things out.

“We’ve made a number of changes. A lot of new guys have got a chance during the league. I think most teams have done that to be fair. I think it’s important that we do it and we’ve held our own in the league which is great.

“We haven’t had any fears or troubles of relegation which I suppose was very good given all the changes.”

Despite the fact that Tyrone have adopted a similar experimental policy to Dublin and handed regular game time to exciting new talents like Kyle Coney, Gilroy believes the 2003, 2005 and 2008 All-Ireland champions are still well ahead of his team in the overall pre Championship scheme of things.

“Well I think that Tyrone are favourites this weekend because they’re probably a better team than we are given their track record over the last seven or eight years,” he said.

“I’ve said it consistently; there’s a gap between us and the likes of Tyrone, Kerry and Cork. We feel that maybe during the league with some of the things we’ve done that we’ve maybe closed that gap a bit but I would expect Tyrone, you know, the fact that they are fighting relegation but also because of the team that they are, to be hot favourites to win this game.”

Asked where exactly his team have improved Gilroy immediately replied that their defence has come on in leaps and bounds.

“The one thing that we have done is that we haven’t conceded as many scores as we did last year,” said the St Vincent’s man.

“In most games last year we were conceding over 20 scores in a game. We had only one game where we came even close to that this year.

“That’s a positive for us. We have to sort out getting some scores down the other end. We’ve started to do that a little bit better in the last couple of games but came out the wrong side of the result but I would be happy with the effort and we haven’t had one of those games where we’ve had a complete nightmare. We were in every game with 10 minutes to go which was very important to us.”

Dublin come into the Tyrone game off a mixed campaign that yielded four wins in a row followed by two losses, to Galway and Cork. Even allowing for his comments that Tyrone are a better side Gilroy is optimistic about facing them because he identified positive signs from his team in both of their recent losses.

“I thought we played very well against Galway, for 40 minutes of the game we probably played some of our best football; the first 20 and the first 20 minutes of the second-half,” said Gilroy, who has made four changes to his team for the Tyrone tie.

Goalkeeper Michael Savage, defenders Denis Bastick and Ross O’Carroll and debutant centre-forward Niall Corkery are all included. One player who definitely won’t feature is Bryan Cullen, their experienced centre-back who has a bulging disc in his back which threatens his entire season.

“We’d hope to know something within the next two weeks,” said Gilroy. “Bryan’s going to go to a number of specialists to see what the options are. Obviously we want to avoid surgery at all costs.”

Dublin (NFL v Tyrone): M Savage; P Conlon, Rory O’Carroll, Ross O’Carroll; P McMahon, D Bastick, C O’Sullivan; E Fennell, R McConnell; D Henry, N Corkery, P Flynn; A Hubbard, K McManamon, B Brogan.