Ian O'Riordanhears some straight talking from the Dublin manager, who says a nine-point win was no reflection of the play

SOMETIMES THERE’S no arguing with the honesty of Anthony Daly. Dublin were poxed. They were completely outhunted. They weren’t winning any ruck ball. They weren’t winning any breaking ball or any dirty ball. There’s honesty for you.

“If you told me coming here that we would win by nine points, I would have taken the hand off you,” said Daly. “Any kind of a win is all we wanted. I knew the danger. It will go down in the history books as a nine-point victory.

“But we were poxed, all right. Eight wides to one at half-time was a frightening stat. The only thing is we feel that if we harried and hooked and put Laois under pressure, maybe the Division Two thing would come through and that they might strike wides. But we were outhunted completely. All through the game we were outhunted. They wanted it more on the day. A nine-point win for us is no reflection of the play. That’s not me putting any dressing on anything. That’s the way it was.”

So it leaves Dublin with perhaps more questions than they would have liked going into the semi-final date with Kilkenny in Croke Park: “Unless we can seriously alter that in two weeks, we have no business being there. But we’re there and we’ll give it a lash,” added Daly. “We have to or we’ll be bet out the gate. It’s a Leinster semi-final in Croker. They haven’t been beaten in five years. We have the first shot at it anyway.

“So I’m more relieved than encouraged. Half-time was a time for straight talking. They were coming away with all the breaks. We just didn’t match them. Laois have improved out of all measure. We said that the Carlow result was probably the perfect result for them.”

Laois manager Niall Rigney was equally honest and surprisingly unapologetic about his team’s performance: “I felt that was the true Laois, scored 16 and hit 17 wides,” he said. “We know ourselves where we are but we’re definitely on the right track. We’re young, we’ve a good bit to go but we’ve come a good bit too.

“Aren’t Dublin a good bit ahead of Laois at the moment? I think they are. These lads are a little bit inexperienced but they’re coming the right way. You wouldn’t have envisaged that 12 months or two years ago. But missed chances. We’d too many snap-shots, eight wides at half-way but we’re going the right way, that’s the most important thing. Our average age is 23, they’re kids, they’re young, they’re a brilliant bunch of lads. I’m desperately proud to be involved with them, fierce proud of them and I’ll tell you they’re going the right route.

“We can hope for a good qualifier run, most definitely. Last year we were beaten by 27 points by Galway in the championship and five weeks later we turned up, won our next game and probably could have beaten Limerick if I’d the panel I had today.”

Losing two players to second yellow cards was something Rigney had mixed feelings about: “Look I don’t use excuses or make excuses but there’s no way Brian Campion should have gone. Colin Delaney definitely should have gone but not Brian. We’d a Munster referee up here today. They’re trying to encourage the game to be played physically and strong, would Brian Campion have been sent off in Tipperary-Cork with that? It was a frontal chest tackle. There’s nothing wrong with that.”