McCrabbe: we made Kilkenny look good

DRAW a line through Kilkenny’s last two championship meetings with Dublin and it would appear that the Leinster and All-Ireland champions have somehow managed to improve on their impossibly high standards since 2009.

Last summer, Brian Cody’s well-oiled machine rolled past Anthony Daly’s side with six points to spare in the provincial decider. A gargantuan 19 separated the counties last month at the semi-final stage.

Alan McCrabbe tasted the pain of defeat on both those occasions but the high-scoring midfielder believes those scorelines cannot simply be taken on their own merit and without much deeper analysis.