Seán Cavanagh sees hard road ahead for champions Dublin

Tyrone captain Seán Cavanagh believes that despite Dublin’s current exceptional form, the All-Ireland champions will face formidable challenges in pursuit of back-to-back titles.The former Footballer of the Year and current All Star was speaking in Croke Park at yesterday’s launch of the Newstalk radio’s coverage of this year’s GAA senior championships.

As a veteran of three All-Ireland defences, Cavanagh has the experience to substantiate his opinions. "I've been through it down through the years and I've seen ourselves as All-Ireland champions back in '04 beating Derry by 11 points and being told at that stage we were All-Ireland champions-elect and Donegal coming out the next game and ripping us up by five or six points. I know it's not easy and you have to give Dublin credit the way they're playing football, which is fantastic for the game and all that, but it's going to be tough for them.

“At some stage along the line this year they’re going to come up against a team that’s going to put them to the pin of their collar and it’s only at that stage – first game, second game, fifth game – when they find out if they’ve that wee bit more oxygen left in the tank that’s going to push them over the line.

"But there'll certainly be a time when that will happen from my experience and other teams' – because it's so hard to do a back-to-back. They deserve all they get because they've been brilliant but at the same time they will come up against hard times."

Qualifiers route
Two of Tyrone's three All-Irelands were won through the qualifiers route and although Cavanagh says that winning your province and going unbeaten is the ideal way to go through a season, he also sees advantages in the alternative. "Strange as it sounds, probably coming through the back door is slightly easier in that when you are, you get up a momentum that can be very hard to stop.

“I thought we were in that sort of place last year; we’d come through two or three really tough weeks and we had got ourselves to that level.

“Okay it didn’t work out against Mayo in the semis. We lost a couple of key players at key times but sometimes coming through the back door you get hardened and because you’re in that position when you can potentially lose every week you don’t fear losing.”

On his return to football last February after missing the early season recovering from a groin injury, Cavanagh was enthusiastic about Tyrone’s more attack-orientated play. But he is circumspect about the prospects of all championship sides buying into all-out offence as opposed to strengthening the rearguard.

“There certainly will be teams that set up like that because there’s a risk and fear factor that’ll come into play and I think most teams will still have an eye on the back door in terms of their defence. I don’t think anyone’s silly enough to think they can go out and play 15v15 and go toe to toe all the time because they’ll obviously get caught somewhere along the line.

“What Dublin has done means that teams will open up some more but I wouldn’t think the era of the 10-man defence is gone at this stage. I think we’ll certainly see plenty of them.”

He believes that the black card has encouraged more open football but remains a bit sceptical about the consistency of its application. “I think it worked well during the league and I think everyone recognises that the scores that were put up in the league were brilliant. Referees in the league maybe gave it a wee bit of a pardon at times and there were challenges that deserved a black card that didn’t get one and there was a grey area between what was a black card and a yellow card.

“I’ve seen it the last few weeks, particularly in club games: referees just don’t understand what it is. As the bigger challenges come in, in the championship and the packed defences as things get a wee bit riskier for teams with more on the line, I think it’s going to be a big issue.

“It puts a lot of pressure on referees and officials but I think in general it’s definitely improved the game from a neutral point of view because everyone wants to see scores.”