O’Carroll: Donegal a bigger test

HE may have been part of the Dublin Under-21 team that got the better of Jim McGuinness last year but Rory O’Carroll insists it will have little bearing on the All-Ireland semi-final against Donegal on August 28.

The Kilmacud Crokes man expects Donegal to present a more formidable hurdle than the one presented when McGuinness was in charge of the U21s in last year’s All-Ireland decider at Kingspan Breffni Park.

Dublin just about won the game after Michael Murphy send a rocket of a penalty crashing against the bar in injury-time. The Dublin full-back and wing-back James McCarthy are likely to again find themselves up against the likes of Murphy and Mark McHugh at the end of the month.

O’Carroll anticipates it will be just as tight but knows Donegal will be an even slicker operation under McGuinness at senior level.

“It will probably be similar enough,” said the 22-year-old. “Jim McGuinness was the manager then too. It was the same style of play but I think it is a bit more fine-tuned.

“You can do it to a certain point but when you are with seniors, they are a lot more disciplined. They did that against us in the U21s and it lasted about 50 minutes and then in the last 10 we broke through.”

Speaking among themselves after the win over Tyrone on Saturday, the Dublin players were preparing for the reality that they won’t get as much freedom against Donegal.

“We said in the dressing room that Donegal will have seen us scoring 19 points from play and it will not be half as easy to do that against them.

“We were scoring from play and Tyrone didn’t have the men back. A lot of the time we were expecting them to have a sweeper but they didn’t and we were three on three in the backs. We won’t have that against Donegal so it will be much harder to rack up scores.

“We didn’t score a goal against six defenders so it will be less likely to score a goal when there are 12 defenders basically. We are going to have to come up with something to try and counter that.”

Although everybody is raving about Dublin’s performance on Saturday, O’Carroll didn’t want to get too ahead of himself.

“We thought that last year when we beat Tyrone, had a great win over them, we thought that was a complete performance but then against Cork we were shown up. So we won’t be resting on our laurels.”

Refreshingly honest, O’Carroll admitted the Dublin defence fouled too much, which ensured Tyrone kept scoring in the second half.

“A lot of scoreable frees they hit us from down the middle so we kind of took them down a bit more than we’d like to. We had the extra man which we could afford to have stood them up but we fouled them instead. We said it at half time and we continued to do it in the second half so that is a bit of a worry. But we didn’t concede a goal so that is a positive.”