GAELIC GAMES:This definitely didn't go according to the script. Dublin were fantastic all through and they had Tipperary rocked, writes NICKY ENGLISH

I SAID in Saturday’s column that I couldn’t see a way for Dublin to win this game but I certainly had my mind changed after 15 minutes yesterday. Dublin were fantastic all through the game and they had Tipperary really rocked.

Tipp couldn’t have imagined beforehand that when the game was over they’d be celebrating with such fervour. But they had to come through a serious test here.

The game definitely didn’t go according to the script. It’s hard to believe our expectations of the contest were so wrong. If you’d been told when Larry Corbett’s goal went in after three minutes that it would ultimately end up being more or less the only difference between the teams, you wouldn’t have believed it.

And you wouldn’t have believed either that the man whose mistake led to the goal would end up being far and away the man of the match in my view.

Peter Kelly had an absolutely outstanding game. He caught everything and cleared everything that came in at full back and even got up the pitch for a point of his own in the closing stages. He blocked down Tipp’s best player in Pádraic Maher in the last minute of the game and stuck it over the bar himself to bring the gap back to just that Corbett goal. It was well-deserved because he had a magnificent game.

Dublin had performers right through the team. Liam Rushe would have run Kelly close because he was immense. Paul Ryan too. They played with abandon.

They competed for every ball and were physically all over Tipperary. Most of the individual battles were won by Dublin and Tipp were hanging in there at the end. The last play of the game had Tipp clearing the ball off their own line. Okay, they were four points ahead at the time but they still had to dig in to get the win.

There’s no doubt Tipperary had a degree of complacency about them coming into the game. The Tipperary team virtually always reflects the mood of the Tipperary public and, no matter how hard they tried, it was always going to be hard for the management to get them to knuckle down after the Munster final – even though it was obvious that the Munster final wasn’t a true test at all.

They can try all sorts of things to keep everyone alert and ready for an ambush but management are only seeing players face-to-face three times a week at most. The players are out in the public the rest of the time and the mood of the public was totally dismissive of Dublin. This semi-final was seen as an annoyance almost, a formality to get out of the way before the final.

Tactically, Dublin did what everyone presumed they would by dropping the extra defender back. But ultimately, I think it was their drive for the ball that made them so competitive. They fought for every ball and Tipp weren’t able to match that. Their best warrior in that kind of combat, Bonner Maher, was replaced in the second half, along with three other Tipp forwards and a midfielder who was playing in the forwards by that stage.

That’s a tribute to the performances of the Dublin defenders. Kelly, Joey Boland, Niall Corcoran, Shane Durkin – these lads had massive games.

In the end, even though the tactic worked as Anthony Daly intended, it was probably the use of the seventh defender that cost Dublin the opportunity to win the game. When you have that many men back, you pay for it up the other end. Ultimately you can’t play an extra defender and still pose a goal threat.

This Dublin train is only starting to roll though and we saw with their minors yesterday that there will be many more semi-finals for them in the coming few years. We’ll hear much more from the boys in blue on Hill 16, who were just as fantastic as their team yesterday. When Dublin win an All-Ireland, they won’t be set up with a seventh defender. The tactic worked yesterday because it got Tipperary to the point of defeat but I just wonder if they had gone at it with an orthodox formation might they have had a better chance of a win, given that Tipp obviously had an off-day?

Tipp didn’t look fresh to me. I had totally changed my tune within the first 15 minutes. Where beforehand I couldn’t logically see a way Tipperary could lose, I was nervous with what I was seeing as a Tipp man by the 15th minute. They didn’t seem to have a lot in the legs. Only for Pádraic Maher and Conor O’Mahony – and Noel McGrath in the second half – they would have been in big trouble.

In the first half, you saw Larry Corbett coming back into his own half to take short puck-outs and he had to do it in the second half as well. Noel McGrath was playing deep too, getting himself into the game after a first half where he didn’t touch the ball. They needed to do that because Dublin were strangling them inside and they weren’t going away.

When you saw two Dublin defenders coming off with cramp after they absolutely emptied themselves on the pitch, you knew Tipp were in a battle.

Noel McGrath’s sideline cut over the bar was the killer blow. It put Tipp a goal up again and then Pádraic Maher scored a great point of his own. That released the pressure a little bit and they ultimately came through.

I just hope the lack of freshness was down to them being over the top after some hard training.

They will definitely need to be fresher for the final than this. They need to improve to play Kilkenny, although in fairness we were saying the same about Kilkenny last weekend as well.

So in the end, we get the final everybody expected at the start of the season, with two teams walking away from semi-finals that they didn’t perform well in. It’s probably the best-case scenario for both of them because it will keep everybody’s feet on the ground going into the final.

Neither manager will mind it one bit, that’s for sure.