NFL MONAGHAN v DUBLIN:An early morning workout for TOM HUMPHRIESas he gets the views of the Dublin camp

IT’S TEN to eight in the morning. Even the smell of coffee and pastries can’t erase that from the mind. Ten to bloody eight.

Into a small, low-slung building just off Griffith Avenue, journalists stray. The by now traditional early morning press conference for the Dublin footballers is about to go down. Dublin play Monaghan tomorrow. There’s a train load of hype coming down the tracks if they win again.

The hacks get coffee with lots of sugar, hoping for some sort of energy rush. The two players present look as if they have been up training since dawn. Which they may well have given the habits inculcated in them.

The players on show today are two of the successes in blue this spring. Kevin McManamon, trimmed down from a year ago, looks as if he will be the real deal as a centre forward this summer. Seán Murray, taller, with more angles, has been inserted as a stop gap full back and has thrived there. A shard of their conversation strays toward us from where the two players are seated.

Kevin is telling Seán. “Sometimes it’s just hard to keep a straight face.”

We didn’t hear and yet we know the question which prompted this.

“What are these things like?” Seán would have said. “Sometimes it’s just hard to keep a straight face”

Pat Gilroy arrives. Pat looks too big for a low slung room like this and he is wearing the sort of suit that suggests that 10 to bloody eight is one third of the way through the working day in his world. He takes the suit jacket off and puts on a Dublin windcheater, mooches around for a bit and has a word with Andy Kettle, Dublin’s progressive chairman.

Then he takes the middle seat of the three at the top table. Time is cracking on. Pretty soon roosters will be crowing and early birds will be turning their thoughts to early worms. Pat’s segment at these set pieces is usually housekeeping. Who is injured, who has recovered, who has been left out. This morning is slightly trickier but not exactly a minefield.

Eoghan O’Gara’s suspension. From the floor we make it clear we would like Pat to howl and rage against Setanta in particular and television in general for highlighting Mr O’Gara’s otherwise unnoticed transgression at the end of the Kerry match. Pat’s not having it. His answer conveys perfectly the feeling that he may indeed be unhappy but his concern is for others.

“I didn’t realise it was that way (highlighted on Setanta). My only concern in this is the pressure on the referees. The referee was very close to that incident in the Kerry match and he made a call based on what was going on. It was the last minute of the game and there was a lot of intensity. He made the call that there wasn’t any intent from either of them to do any damage to one another. My concern would be is that he made the call on the day – let it go. I think it was the right decision but then when you see it in the cold light of day in a committee room . . . it has to be done if somebody is pointed out.”

He adds most reasonably that whatever about the unfairness of close-circuit security cameras of The Sunday Gameand Setanta following hungry lads till they are discovered shoplifting an apple, he would prefer if apples weren't shoplifted at all.

“I would feel, genuinely, that we shouldn’t be putting ourselves in the position where somebody can cite us at all for anything during the match. There’s a discipline issue there, whether we’re on television or not.”

Which is as sensible a response as we have yet heard to the whole Sunday Game/Crime Watchquestion.

Ditto with the vexed problem of Croke Park’s hindrance to the Dublin Spring Series. Croke Park has been declared unavailable for use next Friday night for the game against Mayo, which now proceeds, anti-climactically, on Sunday afternoon.

“I think some of the things I alluded to in terms of decisions for not having the fixture on the Friday, I don’t know where they got the information that it was for the benefit of the players. Did they ask the players? I don’t think so. The way they get to that conclusion, maybe they should do that with more consultation with the parties directly if they are going to make a call like that.”

Gilroy makes some complimentary remarks about Monaghan and their up-tempo game and professes to be an admirer of any team Eamon McEneaney trains. And that’s it. When Pat is done the players are dispatched in either direction to speak with small groups of journalists. McManamon is a familiar face so the larger group is drawn to Seán Murray.

Murray studies theoretical physics in Trinity. Theoretical physics? “Maths and a bit of physics,” he says casually to those of us for who know not much more than that 10 to eight in the morning has always been a theoretical time. Actually it’s apparently Maths and a bit of physics plus some Russian. He is just 20 but totally unfazed. Asked about being drafted in as full back (not his club position) it is offered that full back has been a problem position for the Dubs for some years.

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t really follow the football until I started to play it.” What? Not a fan of the football? “I grew up in a house without a TV. So even though we played a lot of sport, we didn’t follow sport.”

Asked what the Murrays did instead of staring like mesmerised sheep at a crystal bucket he says that they “read books and played sport”.

Murray is off to lectures at 10. Gilroy and McManamon away to work. Monaghan awaiting tomorrow. For a team with a long-haired theoretical physicist at full back the long march continues and the stride is sprightly and confident.