Dublin's system a mystery even to them

EAMON O’BRIEN’S laid-back demeanour is just slightly disturbed by the need to get back to the stands and run an eye over his team’s opponents in next month’s Leinster football final.

The scale of the victory had, not been easily envisaged. “Obviously not,” said O’Brien. “On the basis of possession – I know the teams were level at half-time – I thought Dublin shaded the first half and maybe could have been a point or two ahead.

“It was one of those days when things start going right for you and going wrong for Dublin – and they kept going wrong for them. When we got the goal they came back down the field and Paul Flynn hit the ball off the upright. Another day that’d go in and put the game in the melting pot.

“Games change on small things like that and when we kicked in a long ball we were able to get another score and that probably finished the game. Dublin were chasing it after that.”

Dublin counterpart Pat Gilroy was remarkably forensic for someone whose reconstruction plans lay in smoking ruins.

“We had so much possession in the second half, yet we were destroyed on the scoreboard. We hustled the Meath players well in the first half when they had possession but we didn’t do it as well in the second half and were punished for some very silly errors.”

His defensive system that had performed so encouragingly in the league took a serious knock against Wexford and by yesterday with the reversion to an orthodox alignment, the dam burst on any pretensions to the watertight.

“In the first half we were coming back and giving them decent enough cover,” said Gilroy of his beleaguered full-back line. “When balls were breaking in the second half we were letting the ball break in behind them and the cover wasn’t back for them. We were punished – Meath were very clinical with the goal chances.

“The goals finished it. Meath didn’t have an awful lot of ball in the second half but they took the goal chances well.”

O’Brien admitted that he hadn’t been sure how Dublin’s defensive formation would be configured.

“We did not know what to expect. We heard about the blanket defence and how they try to bring people back. I think they played a more traditional kind of game and the team that they picked was not geared to play that kind of game that they had previously played.

“You can have systems but you need to be able to play football in terms that fellows have to make it up on the day. You can have a system and a plan but you still have to be instinctive and intuitive and make it up on the moment.”

Before he departs he answers the hesitant suggestion that his players may feel that having dethroned the champions of the past five years, they may feel the work is done. “I hope not. That’s my job I suppose – to try and keep their feet on the ground.”