Running to a standstill?

ALEX FERGUSON’S penchant for sharing a glass of vin rouge with his fellow managers has yet to catch on in the GAA but Pat Gilroy and Justin McNulty would have a fair bit to talk about were they of a mind to break out the corkscrew after tomorrow’s Leinster SFC quarter-final in Croke Park.

The Dublin boss is a successful businessman but he gambled his career on the sideline last year when he tore up the blueprint inherited from Paul Caffrey in winter 2008 in favour of a more defensive, less flamboyant system of operations.

McNulty didn’t need the evidence of a first season spent watching his new charges in Laois before instilling a similar modus operandi and so it is that two teams sharing a common philosophy will take their wares to the most unforgiving of marketplaces this weekend.