For those with the growing feeling that something special could be afoot with this Dublin team, this was another afternoon's nourishment. For everyone else, it was hide-under-the-covers stuff. Their 15-point dismantling of the second-best team of the spring was clinical and powerful and yet at the same time utterly beguiling.
This was one of those afternoons when adding the rider that this was only a league final feels slightly redundant, implying as it does that another side on another day in another context will give them a better game of it than Derry did here. Even if that's true, the idea that Dublin put in a performance yesterday that isn't repeatable or that can't be improved upon is laughable.
They won by 3-19 to 1-10 and still managed to kick 17 wides and miss another four goal chances. They had 10 scorers, including three off the bench. Jonny Cooper was given a marking job on Mark Lynch as his day’s work; in the end, Lynch did well to keep Cooper to just a point.
“They are not All-Ireland champions for nothing,” said Brian McIver afterwards. “They are a really, really good side. I would like to think that if we had been much more like ourselves in the first half and had stayed with them, then you would have got a much better idea of how good they were. Because to be honest, once they got that lead they were able to relax.”
Are they way ahead of the pack?
Different game
"I wouldn't say that. Every game's a different game. They are a fine side and at the minute they are rated the best side in the country. But we just simply didn't turn up in the first half and it is very hard to judge how good Dublin were considering that our performance was not up to the level we wanted it to be."
That first half was chastening for McIver’s side, who bore no resemblance to the one that carried such menace against Mayo in the semi-final. Cooper stuck to Lynch like a bad rumour, at a stroke removing Derry’s main attacking option. Though they struck for an early goal through Cailean O’Boyle, they had to wait until the 27th minute for their first point – by which time Dublin already had 10 on the board.
Just like in the semi-final a fortnight ago, Jim Gavin's took a team that had beaten them in the early spring and disabused them of any notion that doing so on a regular basis might be tolerated. Eoghan O'Gara was unplayable in the full-forward line in that opening period, Paul Flynn and Bernard Brogan not far off it. Curiously, Derry kept giving Diarmuid Connolly five yards of space on the edge of the exclusion zone, as if they hadn't seen him play before.
Flattered
By half-time, Dublin led by 0-13 to 1-3 but the scoreline probably even flattered Derry a little. James McCarthy had hit the butt of Thomas Mallon's post, O'Gara and Kevin McManamon had both found the side-netting down in front of the Hill. For Derry, only Ger O'Kane's occasional sallies forward made any inroads.
Seven minutes after the break, whatever teetering chance Derry had of mounting a comeback got tossed off the edge of the cliff by Bernard Brogan, his peach of a goal tying a neat little bow on matters. McManamon and Connolly both grabbed one of their own before the end.
And yet there was precious little revelling in it from Dublin afterwards. "For us, this was another game to be won and at the end, it was a National League final with a trophy to be won. And that's satisfying. But now that that's over, we move on and we've moved on already to the championship which starts in six weeks' time. That preparation has started," said Jim Gavin.
Take it as a warning. Or the thrilling prospect of more to come. Either way, when they play like this, they are Vesuvius and everyone else is Pompeii.
