Leinster SFC Semi-final: It's hard to reconcile the swagger and brio with which Dublin played in thumping Laois at Croke Park with the monosyllabic stonewalling of manager Paul Caffrey. He's right to prefer eloquence on the pitch, but it's the game played after the final whistle that's a little difficult to comprehend.

Caffrey is polite, addressing his inquisitors by name and making eye contact, but the unsmiling mask is studied, so too the effort to answer questions in the fewest words possible. He affords the media exactly two minutes and 53 seconds after their 14-point victory over Laois, just long enough for the players to be smuggled on to the team coach, unencumbered by the mental anguish of the 60-second, in-depth interview.

The only glimpse of players, with the exception of Ray Cosgrove, is through the smoked glass of the team coach. Cosgrove's appearance is fleeting too; he demonstrates the same turn of foot in bolting from the RTÉ television interview area back to the sanctuary of the dressingroom as he did on the other side of the whitewash. All in all, there is a kindergarten feel to the proceedings.

It was therefore pretty apposite how Caffrey opened his post-match dissertations: "You know me, Shane, I keep my thoughts to myself. I didn't expect us to be as good today and I didn't expect Laois to be as poor. It was a good all-round display from Dublin today. A lot of fellas got to the pitch of it early.

"But, you know, the first half was nip and tuck the whole time. We all know, lads, that goals change games, and goals changed that game drastically. Plus I'd like to send best wishes to Pádraic Clancy. I had the pleasure of working with him this year with the Leinster team. He was a big loss and I hope he's not too badly injured."

The tooth extraction began in earnest starting with the success of the alterations in personnel made from the side that beat Longford.

"Changes are changes, lads. You make them and put out your best team every day you go out. The team we put out against Longford was our best team. The team we put out today was our best team. I don't take any of the credit for that. There are players coming into form. The team is picked on form every time. It's the team we hope and expect will do the job and it was no different today. It's the type of performance we look for every time we go out, National League, championship, challenge games."

Cosgrove's tour de force, reminiscent of his excellence in 2002, will draw lavish praise in many quarters, but one senses he won't be getting much more than a handshake from his manager.

Caffrey: "Ray Cosgrove has never gone away. He's a man on form at the moment and that's why he was picked. He delivered again in the Dublin jersey. Happy days for him."

One final point of interest: Caffrey, his management team and players don't read the press. "There's enough experts in our room without reading the experts outside," he confirmed.

To maintain the dental metaphor, Mick O'Dwyer didn't put a tooth in it in summing up his team's display: "We threw in the towel, which was amazing, because in championship football you should never give up.

"No matter how much you're down you keep on fighting. They (Dublin) gave an exhibition of football and they are real contenders for this year's championship. There's no doubt in the world about that.

"So we'll have to regroup now. We are now playing in the qualifiers. We'll give it a shot. It'll be hard to come back from that.

"Then again we have some footballers and they just didn't perform today. They were terrible. I must admit that, but overall we'll have to work on it for the next two weeks and put in a good performance whoever we are drawn against in the qualifiers. We've risen from the dead before and we might do that again."

It wasn't difficult to draw O'Dwyer on the pivotal moment of the match.

"Pádraic Clancy was a massive loss from our team. We were going great when he was there. But still, Dublin were a good side and they played great football. If Clancy had got the goal . . . goals like that at vital stages can make a big difference."

So Laois players refuse to speak to the media before the game and Dublin players decline to speak to the media after the game.

Still, there's always the referee.