Old scores don’t faze Bernard Brogan

Bernard Brogan could be forgiven for reminiscing wistfully about the old days.

It is six years since he signalled his arrival as an inter-county forward of note with a haul of 2-8 against Westmeath in a Leinster semi-final.

Fast forward to their defeat of the same county in this year’s provincial final and some things have changed utterly.

Dublin still won comfortably but their tally of 2-13 was exactly half that posted in 2009 and Brogan managed just 1-1.

Two results plucked from a career’s catalogue can’t be taken too literally, but that drop is illustrative of the changing role which even a man of Brogan’s class has known now that defensive systems have become de rigueurin the modern game.

More elements have conspired to bring about those figures, of course. Dublin are more flush with forwards than they were half-a-dozen years ago, for example, and free-taking duties altered, but Brogan doesn’t yearn for the days of yore on an individual basis even if, as the accompanying graph shows, his fingerprints on the game are lighter now.

“I’ve (had) some great personal accolades — man of the matches, player of the year, All Stars — and I have a maturity now that I get a massive energy out of winning games and coming up and beating structures.

“Like that Leinster final: people say we were coming up against a blanket defence.

“At half-time (against Westmeath) we came in and said, ‘okay lads, they are after putting up a great structure against us, we have to break it down’. We get massive energy from that. As a whole, it’s a great challenge from that. Getting over that is as good as anything.”

How Fermanagh set up against Dublin in Sunday’s second All-Ireland quarter-final at Croke Park remains to be seen, given Pete McGrath’s side has shown itself to be something of a tactical chameleon in changing its approach according to the opposition.

Longford stuck to their beliefs against Jim Gavin’s side earlier this summer and fell 27 points short. Westmeath were more pragmatic and were still swept aside by a double-digit defeat while two northern opponents (Derry and Monaghan) tried similar stalling tactics in the league and also fell short.

“Westmeath set up the blanket defence to put a challenge against us and it was difficult to break down, but we love a challenge. We won the game in the end and won well. It was a decent win but, no, we can’t really say what way teams are going to come up against us

“We just plan for whatever is thrown at us and we have to adapt on the pitch. That’s what a good team does, it adapts to the situation around it.”

Dublin have done just that this year on the back of their chastening All-Ireland semi-final loss to Donegal last season. As to how successful they have been in marrying a new defensive awareness with their attacking prowess will only become apparent from here on in.

It says something of the high standards others hold for them that they were criticised for their performance – wides were a particular problem again – against Westmeath though Brogan is at a loss to understand how anyone can gripe at a win of that magnitude.

“We always try to be that attacking power that we are because that’s the type of great forwards and great runners with the ball (they have),” he said, at an AIG event last week.

“That’s our mantra and that’s what we try and do — set up a defence structure in a certain way. Even when we are playing a mass defence we want to go at teams, break them down. Get in and run at them. That’s the type of football we want to play. When you are playing 15 on 15 there is more room so in essence it is a small adaptation. The mantra is the same.”

So is the bottom line: get the win.