Trying to beat the system

Dublin 1-9, Tyrone 0-12: Sometimes it’s as much what you don’t say as what you do.

Asked in the aftermath of Saturday evening’s claustrophobic Croke Park encounter — which contained just 11 scores from play — if he could envisage Dublin ever playing a containment game like Tyrone’s, Jim Gavin briefly replied, ‘No’.

Gavin, if it wasn’t already quite clear by Dublin’s performances in the last two years, has little or no time for stifling tactics.