Gilroy agrees with Donegal game plan
It had been an edgy game filled with many a potential flashpoint aside from Diarmuid Connolly’s sending-off but, when Maurice Deegan blew the final whistle, Gilroy and Jim McGuinness shared a handshake suffused with genuine warmth.
Gilroy had travelled down a similar road as his Donegal counterpart. In the winter after his first year as Dublin manager, he came to the cold and calculated conclusion that his team needed to increase their focus on the defensive at the expense of their renowned flair.
Bernard Brogan found himself patrolling a lonely station in one half of the pitch for large tracts of the 2010 campaign, just as Colm McFadden did yesterday, so Gilroy had no issue with the tactics used.
“I totally admire them. Totally. Why would you go out and leave a load of space in front of fellas who kicked 22 points the last day. It was just sensible what they did. You would have to admire them. It is incredible to get yourself into shape to do what they did for so long today.”
Dublin have now brushed Tyrone aside with a display of superb attacking football and followed it up by grinding out the most stubborn of victories.
“The only thing to do with semi-finals is win them,” said Gilroy.
“It was an extremely difficult game and we had to show a lot of patience.
“Donegal really put their bodies on the line. It is easy to say to get men back but they really hit you hard and eventually they might have got a little bit tired and that is where the openings came from.”
Dublin’s final tally was actually their lowest in an All-Ireland semi-final since they scored seven points to draw with Mayo in 1955 but more startling was the statistic that it took them a full hour to register from play.
Kevin McMenamon supplied it and Gilroy singled the substitute out in his dissection of events.
“We had to keep probing. We did a lot of the same things in the second half, it was just that eventually we started to find some space. It didn’t come immediately either. Kevin McMenamon made a bit of a difference in that he was beating his man, which was giving us a little more space even though he did not get a lot early off him.
“Eventually he got a lot out of it. Every point was going to be at a premium today and you just have to be patient. There was no point in trying to change everything up and change all around you. We needed to be patient and we knew that we would get the openings.”
It was a victory that came at a cost.
Paul Flynn took to the field accompanied by a troublesome hamstring injury and left it prematurely whilst clutching the same part of his right thigh having collapsed to the ground in some discomfort.
Gilroy can hardly afford the loss of another key forward given that Connolly departed shortly before him after getting a red card.
Gilroy was in the midst of making a substitution at the time and didn’t see the incident but he will hardly be enamoured with his player’s reaction when he sees the DVD, even if Connolly was goaded into a reaction by Marty Boyle.
Donegal have been beaten but their resistance may yet take its toll.
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