Performance, not revenge, the priority for Dublin manager against Donegal

Jim Gavin: "The overall philosophy is that we’re working on performances for the team."

By Darren Cleary

The renewal of Dublin’s storied rivalry with Donegal takes centre stage at Croke Park tomorrow in Division One of the Allianz Football League. The counties have had mixed starts to their respective league campaigns.

Donegal began last weekend with a

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Dublin manager Jim Gavin will be hoping for a response to last weekend’s narrow defeat as the Dubs make their first appearance of 2015 at Croke Park. They don’t have happy memories of their last outing at Jones’ Road when they were dumped out of the All-Ireland at the semi-final stage by Donegal in 2014, the then reigning champions were surprise 3-14 to 0-17 losers.

Gavin says they wont be motivated by avenging that loss on Saturday. “We spoke about that game and what went well, what didn’t go well and how we can improve, players went back to the club and that game is now in the past and the World moves on.”

He added, “It’s a different year, a different campaign, that was under completely different circumstances with different players on the field. What happened in the past, stays in the past.”

Donegal's win over Derry and their performance caught the eye of the Dublin boss,

“They got off to a very good start last weekend beating Derry, which is always a tough game but we’ve done most of our work this week about how we’re going to play our game of football.”

The Dublin boss added: “Donegal are a very good side as we’ve seen the last few years there’s some excellent players there, no matter who the manager is we know it’s going to be a very tough game.”

Gavin took positives from Dublin's inauspicious start to the reigning champions Division One title defense.

“I think defensively we were very strong, offensively we created a lot of chances and we were in a very good position to win the game with fifteen minutes to go. We just didn't finish it out and that’s part of the learning curve for everybody.”

The defeat against Cork was Dublin’s first loss in 2015, having won all of their games before that on the way to

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Gavin remains confident that the Boys in Blue can repeat the success they had in the League in 2013 and 2014, when they won and retained the crown.

“The overall philosophy is that we’re working on performances for the team and if we can get those performances the results will happen, and that will be the focus going into this weekend’s game with Donegal.”