O’Carroll: Dublin ready to embrace blanket task

It will forever be known as the game that led Jarlath Burns to declare the death of football, but Rory O’Carroll fully expects Dublin to be faced with the same defensive dilemmas this summer as that employed by Derry at the end of March.

Jim Gavin’s side won well in the end that evening, lest we forget. The final margin was four points but the statistic of note was the fact that only a dozen had been scored in total after a game of what could be described as defensive chicken. The championship, as it always does, brings with it hopes of finer fare on the back of blue skies and harder pitches, but Dublin’s full-back is bracing himself for the likelihood of opponents again parking the bus at some point during the campaign to a degree even beyond the modern norm.

“Yeah. Absolutely,” says O’Carroll. “In at least one or two games, but that is something we have been working on in training and we are actually really looking forward to that in a lot of ways. We will be expecting it at some stage.”