Gavin stays calm over Dublin’s squandering of so many goal chances

Jim Gavin isn't a man given to panic. You don't get to fly the government jet if a little turbulence is going to leave you flustered. So when his Dublin side squandered goal chance after goal chance on Saturday night, it was entirely predictable he remained sanguine about it.

“Obviously, you’d rather they went in,” he said after wards. “Of course you would. But they kept at it. That’s the main thing. We’ve always said we give the players a framework to play within and after that then it’s up to them to express themselves.

“There’s no particular rule when a player is bearing down on goal whether he should pass or take a shot. They’re all highly intelligent men and they have great game intelligence. They play it as they see it.

"We'll reflect on every passage of play. We'll look back on it all. That has been the same from pre-season tournaments to the national league to the championship."

Irk him
The one aspect of the night that did irk him emerged later when he used a Newstalk interview to take aim at the amount of frees given against his side by referee David Coldrick.

On the face of it, it seemed an odd enough complaint – Dublin conceded just 10 frees in the first half and nine in the second.

If Gavin had reason to complain about any decision it was the blatant penalty his side should have had when Michael Shields picked the ball clean off the ground less than a metre out from his own goal-line in the second half.

“From the player’s perspective it’s frustrating to see the free count so high and sometimes you can be a little bit at a loss as to why that is because we do place such an emphasis on our tackling. No one would ever accuse this Dublin team of being cynical. We play open, expansive football.

"It has been happening all year, throughout the league and championship, the tackle count has been going against us for whatever reason. We're at a bit of a loss to see why that is.

'Tackling is a skill'
"Defending is an art and tackling is a skill and we'll keep telling lads to get the inside hand in tackling the ball. There were some great strips there and the frees went against us."

Despite the fact Cork were able to put Rory O’Carroll and Jonny Cooper under serious pressure through their use of the high ball – Cooper was eventually substituted by Philly McMahon – Gavin professed himself delighted with the way they survived the bombardment.

“I thought they coped with it admirably. They were against one of the best six forwards in the game that Cork have. Give any of those guys half a foot and they’ll punish you. I thought they limited the opportunities that Cork had.

Able to punish us
We just saw when Cork got away from the guys and got a bit of daylight that they were able to punish us.

“But I thought our full-back line coped very well with it and we’re very happy.

“Even if we did [concede a goal], we were confident throughout. Both teams kept coming at each other and it was a very honest game of football. It’s football the way I believe it should be played.”