‘Scary’ Dublin have alarm bells ringing for Sean Cavanagh
Cavanagh guided Tyrone to Division 2 final success on Sunday afternoon before taking a seat in the stand to watch Dublin power to an 11-point win over Kerry in the main event.
The three-time All-Ireland medallist and 2008 Footballer of the Year admitted it was a disconcerting experience to witness Kerry, apparently Dublin’s closest rivals, get filleted and suffer a double-digit defeat.
The upshot of the weekend for many neutrals is Tyrone have now moved a little closer to Dublin in the pre- Championship pecking order, purely by dint of not having been beaten by them this year.
When the sides last met in the 2015 league, they drew at Croke Park and, as things stand, Tyrone are the only unbeaten team in the entire country this year, having won the Dr McKenna Cup and the Division 2 title.
Captain Cavanagh, however, tempered optimism among supporters by insisting that having operated in the second tier all spring, he doesn’t really know how good Tyrone truly are and, when it comes to Dublin, he fears they may operating at their own unique level.
“It’s mad,” declared Cavanagh. “I’ve been playing Gaelic football a long time but to have that sort of dominance for a sustained period....like, in reality they could have had Donegal beaten in the first 10 or 15 minutes of that (2014 All-Ireland) semi-final and that’s the only game they’ve let themselves down in in the past three years.
“Even in that game, they had a few chances to whitewash Donegal and they probably would have gone on to win the final as well.
“It’s scary how dominant they’ve been over the last three years but you can do nothing else but sit back and credit Jim Gavin and what he’s been able to do with that group of players, to put together such a strong and powerful running team.
“They do flood numbers back too. I saw Bernard Brogan defending as much as Jonny Cooper against Kerry but at the same time they have the power and the pace and the strength to blow teams away at the other end and you see the Kerry lads out on their feet after 50, 55 minutes, and that’s where games are won and that’s where Dublin are experts at wearing teams down.
“So you’ve got to give them credit because I haven’t seen a team since I’ve been involved in football that has been so dominant.” Dublin are strong favourites now to claim a fourth All- Ireland title in six seasons and are the first team in over 40 years to win four Allianz league titles in a row. Asked if they will go down as one of the greatest teams ever, Cavanagh nodded.
“Yeah, there’s no doubt about that,” said the former International Rules captain. “You’re looking around at some of their personnel and even the likes of Paul Flynn and Diarmuid Connolly, who are some of the best players I’ve played against, they had average enough seasons last year. Still Dublin whitewashed every team so you’re thinking they can afford to have off days and off seasons but they’re still grinding out serious results and that’s a big thing for a team to be able to say.”
If both Tyrone and Dublin win all of their championship games, then they would meet in the All-Ireland final next September as Ulster and Leinster champions respectively. That’s not a far fetched scenario given they are the only two teams who went through their entire league campaigns unbeaten though Cavanagh was coy on the Red Hands’ championship aspirations.
“To be honest, I don’t know where we are at this stage,” said EirGrid ambassador Cavanagh ahead of Saturday’s EirGrid U21 football championship final.
“I think we had more of an idea last year having actually played Dublin and we weren’t that far away from them, we got a draw, and then we played Kerry and got a draw so we were thinking we were reasonably well set up to have a go at these guys if we met later in the championship.
“But this year is different. I’m not sure where we’re at and that’s a dangerous enough place to be.”
Meanwhile, Cavanagh agreed with the suggestion made by Kerry manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice on Sunday that Kieran Donaghy, and physically big players generally, don’t get enough protection from referees.
“That’s the law of the jungle,” said Cavanagh, a similarly powerful player. “It’s the way it’s been since I was U12 or U14 and I’m sure Kieran has been exactly the same. You get used to it, that men are going to be hanging off you and if you get a free then all the better.
“I think there is a certain psychology among referees that they almost think a bigger man can take it, ‘let him get on with it’. I think it’s part of human nature, just the way everyone treats GAA.”
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