Dublin can keep the hype building

GAELIC GAMES/All-Ireland SF quarter-final/Dublin v Westmeath: Croke Park's biggest weekend of the season to date unfolds over the next two days. This afternoon the blue hordes descend on Jones's Road as Dublin chase a first final-four finish in four years.

It doesn't take much to trigger hysteria among the Hill faithful, but with the elimination of Ulster's big two, Armagh and Tyrone, from the Bank of Ireland All-Ireland football championship fevered optimism now rages across the capital.

To the more sober-minded it's something of a mystery how Dublin have come to figure so high in the betting. Over the five years of the modern qualifier era the Leinster champions have been eliminated from the championship by either the above Ulster duo or Kerry, still very much in business after last week's rebirth.

Dublin's performances have been sound, but manager Paul Caffrey knows they haven't yet faced the sort of serious test posed by a ranking county.

Until a team faces down crisis in that sort of tight championship match, it's hard to be definitive about All-Ireland credentials.

But what they needed to do this season, Dublin have done, and there have also been improvements.

Centrefield has been consistently dominant, with Ciarán Whelan equalling his 2002 season as an out-and-out generator of possession, although if Stephen Cluxton's precise kick-outs to Shane Ryan have been very effective to date, surely teams from now on will track his runs out to either wing.

The movement among the forwards has been slick and assured even if the end product hasn't always followed immediately.

Perhaps if Conal Keaney's goal chance in the opening minutes of the Leinster final hadn't hit the post, Dublin would have pulled away a lot earlier, but the quick passing didn't always lead to a commensurate finish.

There is a spread of scoring power in the attack that is necessary if Dublin are to fulfil their ultimate ambitions.

There is also a white-hot focus on the task in hand from the co-operative movement Caffrey has moulded into a backroom army through the full embrace of the path of sports science to the almost military reconnoitring in DCU after matches.

This isn't a particularly attractive match for Dublin. Westmeath are the outsiders among all eight of the quarter-finalists and are the most written-off of those teams. It is just assumed they will end the day as road-kill.

During the week selector and county secretary Paddy Collins said the county was a little miffed at the vast prices being quoted on the team and the fact that without kicking a ball last weekend Westmeath drifted in the betting from 66 to 1 to 80 to 1.

As provincial champions within the last two years, Tomás Ó Flatharta's team have considerable and positive Croke Park experience to call upon and they beat Dublin during that famous championship year in 2004.

They are also an example of a team that has reconstituted itself in the qualifiers in the best way possible - by winning tight finishes against very respectable opponents.

Had Galway won the qualifier two weeks ago, this afternoon's match would have been regarded as far more of a 50-50 call.

Those familiar with Ó Flatharta, a Kerryman whose club is Dublin's Kilmacud Crokes, say he is a cautious coach who will be paying particular attention to Dublin's lines of attack and the question of how best to deny them space.

It was a conundrum he solved against Galway by crowding out the home side's highly rated - if not exactly on-form - full-forward line.

His own centrefield is strengthened by the return of David O'Shaughnessy, though had Foster and Allen been selected in the sector it wouldn't be possible for Dublin to win any more ball than they managed in the Leinster final.

Then up front is Dessie Dolan, returned from the injury that kept him out of the provincial championship, and it is noticeable that as he feels his way back to full match fitness the other forwards have picked up the slack, including his brother Gary, who has scored a goal in the last two matches.

The biggest question mark against Dublin so far has been the full-back line, which has a fairly improvised look and struggled at first against Thomas Deehan and Niall McNamee, neither of whom has the achievements and experience of Dolan.

This is nonetheless a match Dublin should win.

Kevin Heffernan used tell his teams their fitness and drive would eventually take care of their opponents even if they weren't able to move clear until the final quarter; the most important thing was to maintain the momentum and maintain the pressure.

Dublin appear to have the capacity and the fitness levels to do that, and if they have to push that bit harder to shrug off Westmeath, Caffrey won't be too unhappy.