Though it took them just a little while to get the ship pointed in the right direction, Dublin’s progress was pretty smooth in the end here.
They were given plenty of it by a physical and well-organised Laois team but when you're playing Dublin you need those things just to compete. Winning requires more. And more is what Dublin have compared to everyone else.
They won despite missing seven goal chances on a day when, as Tomás Ó Flatharta ruefully reflected afterwards, Laois didn't even create one. They won despite losing Bernard Brogan to injury in the first half and the rest of their full-forward line – Alan Brogan and Eoghan O'Gara, if you don't mind – getting the curly finger from Jim Gavin before the 50th minute.
Just as in every game Dublin played on their way to the All-Ireland last year, their bench outscored the opposition’s. The replacements for that trio alone added six points to Dublin’s final score. The total contribution from the bench came to nine. By contrast, the Laois substitutes carried only a single point in with them. It’s a measure of the different worlds the two sides inhabit that Ó Flatharta came away encouraged by the experience some of his younger subs gained.
“I think it was the experienced guys that they had on the bench that came on and the scores that they got, compared with the lads we brought on who were 18 or 19 years of age and who wouldn’t have the same experience of Croke Park. They’re good footballers those lads and I think this is going to stand them well.”
Capable Laois On balance, you’d hardly begrudge him the instinct to find a silver lining. Laois didn’t deserve the 11-point tonking that goes into the books. They were focussed and intelligent in how they set about Dublin in the first half especially and though they lived on their nerves
they were entitled to be proud of their 0-10 to 0-8 half-time lead.
It was a lead that owed much to the work they’d done on Dublin’s kick-outs and plenty also to the clever probing of Donie Kingston at centre forward and some classy shooting by Ross Munnelly, who kicked three of Laois’s first five points, with Kingston feeding him for two of them. The third, a fantastic effort from the left wing with his left boot, put Laois 0-5 to 0-3 up on 15 minutes.
By then, Dublin had drawn two good saves from Graham Brody in the Laois goal. Paddy Andrews curled a shot against the crossbar soon after and Diarmuid Connolly rattled Brody’s post. But Laois kept their noses above the waterline, mostly thanks to Dublin’s radar being ever so slightly askew.
At the other end, Laois kept kicking their scores. James Finn curled over a fine point from distance, Kingston followed suit a couple of minutes later to put them 0-8 to 0-6 ahead. And although Dublin clawed their way back to parity through Paul Flynn and O’Gara, Laois were defiant.
For a 19-year-old on his championship debut, Brody was living the dream. He saved twice more before the break, from Alan Brogan and O’Gara. Stephen Cluxton’s kick-outs hadn’t been working out to their usual efficiency and when he came forward to kick a couple of 45s wide, Laois were entitled to imagine that maybe something was stirring.
Comeback kings If they did, it was likely a view held by relatively few in the ground. Dublin are no strangers to going in behind at half-time – they trailed at the break against Meath, Kerry and Mayo en route to the All-Ireland last year. And just as they’d made little of it then, so they did again here.
Kevin McManamon was on by now for Bernard Brogan and kicked the first two points of the second half. Flynn chipped his third of the day and Cluxton reset the dial with an ice-cool 45 into the Hill. When James McCarthy got forward for a point in the 46th minute to put them 0-13 to 0-11 ahead, you started to fear for Laois.
And with good reason. Paddy Andrews opened up the Laois full-back line with a Scholesian crossfield ball to Philly McMahon in the 47th minute who in turn played in Connolly. Connolly, who had been quiet enough up to then, slipped initially but recovered to finally beat Brody into the bottom corner. Dublin 1-13 Laois 0-11.
Laois kept at it but never got closer than three points. And just when they did, Dublin finished it off, Michael Darragh Macauley profiting from a mistake by full-back Paul Begley to hammer home Dublin’s second goal.
After that, Jim Gavin cleared the bench. And, as Dublin’s bench tend to do, they cleared up any outstanding issues. Cormac Costello kicked three points, Dean Rock the same.
So Dublin march on, winning well even though at times they didn’t play all that convincingly. They kicked a hatful of wides and missed enough goal chances to win two games and quell the spirit of a Laois team that is probably good enough to make the last 12.
Ominous stuff.
