All too easy for Dublin yet again as blue wave rolls on

Dublin 2-21 Laois 2-10

Dublin snacked lightly on Laois on Saturday night and didn’t need both ends of the toothpick to deal with the remnants. They squashed Mick Lillis’s side with extreme prejudice in the opening five minutes and though they got a little sloppy early in the second half to cough up a couple of goals, there was never any danger of a game breaking out. The beatings continue. Morale ain’t improving.

This makes it nine Leinster Championship matches in a row they’ve won by double digits. The final tally was 11 here but it would have ended up maybe double that without the careless spell between the 42nd and 46th minute during which they coughed up 2-1 on the bounce. They lost Paul Flynn to injury in the warm-up, got no scoring return from his replacement Paul Mannion, nor from Bernard Brogan or Kevin McManamon or either midfielder. And they still put up 2-21. Ho-hum.

For Laois, that brief scoring burst early in the second half offered up a tiny glimpse of what was possible. It came and went like subliminal advertising, appearing and dissolving so quickly as to make you wonder had you seen it at all. But for a sustained five-minutes spell they had Dublin going backwards, scrabbling for their footing.

They were 2-14 to 0-7 behind when the ever-game Conor Meredith ran Cian O’Sullivan up the right sideline and beat him to draw a foul around 40 yards out. Meredith slipped a quick free to corner-back Damien O’Connor who had made a ballsy run off the ball in the hope something might break his way. Jonny Cooper brought O’Connor down, Paul Cahillane planted the penalty.

Four minutes later, Donie Kingston won a 40-60 ball with a couple of Dubs hanging off him and spotted Stephen Attride scurrying forward on open country. The wing-back crashed a peach of a shot high to Stephen Cluxton’s left and Laois had something to shout about. It is the curse of halfway decent Leinster teams these days to only ever do what they set out to do long after the game has sailed off across the horizon on them.

“Getting it down to six points was good,” sighed Lillis afterwards. “We played a lot of good football to get it to six points. But six points is a long way from winning the game. . It’s certainly a long way from winning the game when you’re numerically disadvantaged as we were.

“While there were encouraging signs, and we did play some very good football in the second half, it was always something to bring a bit of honour out of the game rather than ever having a chance of winning it.”

Dublin were out the gap after just five minutes. In truth, they were probably gone after 14 seconds, which was all it took for Dean Rock to slide home Dublin’s first goal of the summer. All Laois’ planning went up in a ball of smoke when Rock danced in along the sideline past turnstile tackling to beat Graham Brody.

Diarmuid Connolly made it 2-0 to 0-1 on five minutes with a goal that took all over 12 seconds for the ball to leave Stephen Cluxton’s boot and find the back of the net. Laois pushed up on Cluxton’s kick-out but someone lost James McCarthy, standing alone and untouched in midfield for the Dublin keeper to pick out. Connolly hadn’t much resistance either when McCarthy fed him and the pace, power and finish were unanswerable anyway. Game over.

“It all happened so fast,” said Lillis. “I don’t think we’d actually got into the rhythm of how we wanted to play the game. They are a very experienced side, a very good side and I’m sure they went for the jugular very early on, went to put us away which obviously they did.

“We weren’t set up, we hadn’t really got to grips with how we wanted to play the game. I suppose you could call it a lack of concentration or a lack of not being at this level often enough. Look, they’re young lads, they’re all learning at this level. There was a lapse of concentration for a little while and these things happen. It happens to better teams than us.

“I don’t think fear is the right word. We weren’t afraid. We just didn’t cope with their onslaught. It was hard, it was fast, their running game was strong. It just took us a little bit longer to get into the game than we would have liked, and we were punished accordingly.”

Onslaught is a perfect word. Dublin just blitzed Laois with that early start and left them in ashes. Connolly and Rock tacked on scores at will from there to half-time, Ciarán Kilkenny kept up his phenomenally consistent shooting from last summer. John O’Loughlin saw a red card for busting Michael Darragh Macauley’s nose in frustration 10 minutes before the break.

There was nothing to see from a long way out. Laois eventually drew the second half but even when they got the margin back to six, it only took a slight touch of the pedal from Connolly and Rock to see the champions home.

“The players themselves will not be happy with that second-half performance,” said Jim Gavin afterwards. It certainly gives us a lot to reflect upon. We understand that just would not be good enough in our next game. That gives us a bit of focus for the coming weeks.

“It’s just good to come away from Nowlan Park with a win. We just wanted was to get a performance, it’s difficult for any championship game to get it for the full expanse of the game but we knew we’d hopefully get the result and that’s what happened. We’re pleased with that.”

DUBLIN: Stephen Cluxton; Philly McMahon, Jonny Cooper, David Byrne (0-1); James McCarthy, Cian O'Sullivan, John Small; Michael Darragh Macauley, Brian Fenton; Paul Mannion, Dean Rock (1-10, 0-6 frees), Ciarán Kilkenny (0-4); Kevin McManamon (0-1), Diarmuid Connolly (1-4), Bernard Brogan. Subs: Denis Bastick for Macauley (blood sub), 28-44 mins; Mick Fitzsimons for McMahon, 45 mins; Cormac Costello for Brogan, 51 mins; Con O'Callaghan (0-1) for Mannion, 56 mins; Darren Daly for O'Sullivan, 59 mins; Eric Lowndes for Cooper, 62 mins; Eoghan O'Gara for Rock, 63 mins.

LAOIS: Graham Brody; Damien O'Connor (0-1), Mark Timmons, Paul Cotter; Stephen Attride (1-0), Darren Strong, Colm Begley (0-1); Conor Meredith, Brendan Quigley; Paul Cahillane (1-2, 1-0 pen, 0-2 frees), John O'Loughlin (0-1), Gareth Dillon; Donie Kingston (0-2, 0-1 free), Evan O'Carroll, Gary Walsh (0-1). Subs: Alan Farrell for Dillon (blood sub) 21-22 mins; Kevin Meaney (0-1) for O'Carroll, 30 mins; Niall Donoher for Walsh, half-time; Ross Munnelly (0-1) for Dillon, 47 mins; Alan Farrell for Cahillane, 62 mins; Ruairí O'Connor for Meredith, 65 mins; Gearoid Hanrahan for Cotter, 65 mins.

Referee: Ciarán Branagan.