Putting on repeat will make Dubs stars

And on the seventh day they rested...

They’re in the zone, the bus is moving along nicely, so for the past week they did exactly the same as they did in the period between the replay with Wexford and the drawn game with Kilkenny. If it ain’t broke, etc.

On Sunday morning the Dublin players and management began the post-Portlaoise decompression process with a jog and a swim in Na Fianna. Then breakfast and a chat. Nothing too in-depth, mind, because the stats from the previous night were still being collated and Anthony Daly was happy to speak in broad strokes.

Too soon to be fixating on the small things.

Monday was about rest and recovery. More of the same on Tuesday. Back together on Wednesday and they put in a good hour’s training, including a bit of a practice match.

A few of the players nursing knocks, yes, but that was only to be expected. All eyes fixed on the following Sunday and no real need to spell out the underlying message that there’s not much use in beating Kilkenny if there’s no after-sales service.

Will the Dubs be tired against Galway? Nonsense. They’ll only be tired if they’ve been foolish enough to let themselves believe they should be tired.

The manager will have been telling them the precise opposite: they’re fit, they’re fresh, they have momentum and their confidence is sky-high. The graph is ever rising.

In a way this Leinster final is — and here’s a notion that simply didn’t exist a few years ago — just another match for Dublin, the latest bend to be taken on a fast-flowing kayak ride.

Yet in another way it’s much more than that, not least because tomorrow morning the sun may well rise over a joyous land where the ruling family have been deposed and all citizens are equal.

The winners in Croke Park will advance to an All-Ireland semi-final and harbour legitimate aspirations of September glory. The losers will advance to an All-Ireland quarter-final and harbour no less legitimate aspirations of reaching the semi-final — and, secretly, the final after it.

In addition to their momentum, one immense plus for Dublin is the raft of players performing really well at the moment, notably Peter Kelly, Paul Schutte and Liam Rushe at the back. The Dubs aren’t defending in depth but they’re defending with rigour, getting numbers to the point of breakdown and around the runner. Be sure they’ll foul Joe Canning from distance tomorrow if they have to. They’d be mad not to.

The one caveat concerns their recent scoring returns. Seventeen scores against Kilkenny on both occasions is not the stuff of provincial titles. Perhaps the pampas of Croke Park will afford them the opportunity to hit something like, say, 1-21. They’ll need to in order to win.

Would that their forward line was just a little stronger and more imaginative. Mark Schutte and Eamon Dillon have done well off the bench, but what a pity Ciaran Kilkenny isn’t around the place. Given that the big-ball Dubs are currently doing a creditable impression of Brazil 1970, Jim Gavin really ought to do the decent thing and release him to the hurlers.

Galway? The usual remarks apply. Their eternal unknowability. The whole riddle in a mystery in an enigma thing.

All we can say for certain is that Laois gave them a wake-up call that Anthony Cunningham will have done his best to ensure they heeded. And that, in view of the lack of new talent, repeating the feat of last summer — ie three good-to-excellent championship performances in succession — is looking an even tougher ask than it already did.

Four very simple words: Dublin can win this.