Gilroy doing it his way with no-frills Dubs

Leinster SFC Quarter-Final

The team that delivered pain and panache in equally outlandish measures under Paul Caffrey is, finally, a thing of the past.

Even the Arnotts logo which was synonymous with their fortunes for almost 20 years is no more.

And yet, the alterations run much deeper than the cosmetic.

Only a third of the players who started ‘Pillar’ Caffrey’s last game in charge against Tyrone in August of 2008 have survived to take their places in the side that will open the county’s 2010 championship campaign against Wexford tomorrow.

It is a startling turnover by any standards and one that sums up the fundamental nature of the changes undertaken by Pat Gilroy who, like Brian Cowen, has assumed the throne only to be faced with some harsh realities.

In fairness, Gilroy accepted as much from the get-go. An exhaustive trawl of talent began from day one and only seven of those starters from Tyrone did likewise against Kerry last August.

The net result, of course, was depressingly similar – a crushing defeat in an All-Ireland quarter-final that seemed to suggest that the Dubs were actually pedalling backwards at a rate of knots.

There was, however, no going back for Gilroy.

No-one was placated by their capture of a fifth Leinster title in mid-July and the St Vincent’s club man continued his experimentation throughout the spring when 32 players wore the county colours in the NFL.

It has been a year dogged by injuries and that has coloured his selection for Croke Park this weekend, but there is nonetheless the feeling that what we will see tomorrow will be very much Pat Gilroy’s team.

“Ah, possibly, possibly,” he says. “We made a lot of changes to the team last year as well but, due to different events, we ended up with more like the same 15 by the end of the summer.

“We were trying to play a certain way last year and we have been trying to refine that this year and get really specific about the improvement and the guys we have playing there now.”

His opening gambit this summer has been to hand out five starting championship debuts against Wexford while a handful of more experienced servants find themselves on duty in unfamiliar posts.

Captain David Henry, a man whose roots run deep in Dublin’s full-back line, starts at centre-forward while Denis Bastick has popped up at wing-back after spending the previous championship in the number three jersey.

Of the six defenders, Barry Cahill is the only one who has any amount of experience operating at his chosen berth at this level. The full-back line, in particular, is a veritable creche in the dog-eat-dog world of inter-county football.

Between the three of them, Michael Fitzsimons, Rory O’Carroll and Phillip McMahon have the grand total of one championship start to their credit.

No wonder there is less of a buzz around the capital this year.

“I can’t really speak for what others think,” says Henry. “Amongst ourselves, all we’re trying to do is get the best from ourselves. I don’t think we’ve done that in the past.

“We have a lot of fresh bodies there so we have to wait and see until we go into Croke Park for the championship and see how we get on and take it from there. It’s a fresh start for us, as well as for people looking on.”

Put simply, there are question marks on every line of the pitch. Eamon Fennell had a fine league but will he be a mobile enough midfielder on the HQ prairie? And is Ross McConnell the man to partner him? Ditto up front.

With Alan Brogan starting on the bench, Dublin will be depending on his brother Bernard and a rusty Conal Keaney for the brunt of their scores as the other four attackers are all ‘domestiques’.

Which brings us to another point. Love them or hate them, few teams played with the flamboyance of Dublin at their peak this last 10 years but Gilroy has overseen a shift to a more defensive mindset, especially this year.

An encouraging league campaign was built on defence in numbers, so much so that they played with one forward marooned in opposition territory before appearing to find a better balance in round seven when beating Tyrone in Omagh. Down are another county to have bitten the bullet and curbed their attacking instincts and it is a sign of the times such teams have felt the need to adopt less romantic styles of play in the quest for success.

Gilroy makes no apologies.

“As long as football has been played you need to defend all over the field. All that has happened is that peoples’ fitness levels have gone up to a new level and the levels of defence have also had to go up to a different level to keep scores down. If you go back through the years, big scores weren’t scored in every game. It wasn’t 1-20 to 1-18 in all the games in the 70s and 80s.

“There probably just wasn’t the same need for such attention on defence.

“Maybe it doesn’t look great at times but it depends on your view of the game. Some people would see good defending as being a very positive part of the game. It can be as good as good attacking.”

Results, and Hill 16, will be the judge of that.