Tyrone 3-14BY HALF-TIME in Saturday's All-Ireland football quarter-final the multiple thuds of widely held expectation hitting the ground were unnerving. There were probably optimistic Dublin supporters who felt if the team could get a run on the match for even a short while things might be salvageable, but there can't have been many of them.
Reasonable observers would have had sight of Dublin's frailties going into this match and also of the potential danger from opponents with 12 starting All-Ireland medallists, but on the basis of what had been transacted this season the gap between Dublin and Tyrone didn't look bridgeable even with fluctuations in form.
In the upheaval that came to pass, however, the extremes of possibility were touched and, at times it felt, exceeded. Mickey Harte drew from his team their best performance since winning the 2005 All-Ireland. Players with little form to boast of were inspired, by the occasion, the opportunity to have a crack off Dublin or simply the desire to do themselves justice.
Again the prospect of a big display from Tyrone was widely anticipated but the quality of their game - from sticky, focused defending to free-flowing breaks from deep and slick interpassing to precise finishing - hadn't been even detectable in any championship showing since perhaps the demolition of Donegal just over 12 months ago.
It's hard, however, to draw a line between that eruption of form and the disintegration of the Leinster champions. Manager Paul Caffrey called it a day in the stunned aftermath, worn out by the perennially Sisyphean task of winning Leinster only to watch mounting expectations tumble every time they meet top-quality opposition.
The statistics stack up painfully but no one could have expected Dublin to suffer their biggest championship defeat in 30 years, the 1978 All-Ireland final, and the first double-digit beating since the almost identical 3-13 to 1-8 the following year, also against Kerry.
There'll be no Dublin-Kerry final this year and when the debris is sifted through it will be possible to identify hubris in the broad assumptions made about All-Ireland finals and even the casting of Tyrone as a searching test en route to greater things.
The excellence of the winners was, however, the real surprise. A few of them sporting beards, the team looked grizzled as a pack of 19th-century explorers, and somewhere in the collective experience they found the drive and ambition to take the game to the favourites.
The first point, a dynamic move from defence culminating in Tommy McGuigan's point, showed they would not simply be battening down the hatches in the face of Dublin's expected opening surge. In the event there was - extraordinarily - no surge at all.
Dublin began with an ominous collection of wides, four before they scored. They also showed alarming signs of disorientation as their opponents effortlessly created and used space. The second score came from Conor Gormley breaking unaccompanied to point.
Admittedly this followed closely on what rapidly became apparent as an emblematic disaster, the seventh-minute departure of Alan Brogan. Nothing in what followed suggested that their captain and leading forward could have turned the match - and his replacement and brother Bernard played well for three points - but Gormley's foray was an immediate reminder Tyrone would exploit any chance.
Dublin's unease at close quarters with the raised tempo was understandable in the light of a Leinster campaign during which only Westmeath posed a sustained test but everywhere else on the field you couldn't move for the flap of returning chickens.
The two main areas of concern have been a defence that has never looked more than a work in progress and a collective flakiness under pressure.
Tyrone turned the screws. Collie Holmes, a late call-up, gave a resounding display at centrefield while Enda McGinley maintained his good form in the sector. Ciarán Whelan was effectively shackled and Shane Ryan, though he got on the ball, found the familiar roads blocked and his forwards unable to shake off their markers.
Led by Gormley and Ryan McMenamin, with Justin McMahon also holding the square well, Tyrone's defence gave Dublin few enough glimpses of opportunity and when they did, Dublin were unable to capitalise.
Lack of composure showed when Tomás Quinn declined a goal chance in favour of a hand pass to Diarmuid Connolly but the transfer was haplessly overhit and the chance passed. Only one starting forward scored from play.
By contrast only one of Tyrone's didn't. Swiftly Dublin's defensive travails loomed large. For all the talk of improved conditioning Brian Dooher, rewinding the clock for a hugely dynamic display, simply bounced Colin Moran on the way to an 18th-minute point.
The ailing experiment of turning Ross McConnell into a full back finally blew up the lab when he allowed Seán Cavanagh - admittedly while overcarrying - to work in along the endline before finishing for Tyrone's first goal.
But McConnell, a promising centrefielder, has had his career derailed by the lack of a full back, and he wasn't the only leak in a devastated full-back line.
David Henry's fine season to date was incinerated and Paul Griffin fared no better. Colm McCullagh and Tommy McGuigan will do well to make as much hay again at Croke Park as they managed here - McCullagh setting up the third goal and kicking three points from play.
Dublin got a goal out of the blue when Conal Keaney exploited hesitant defending to fist home a line ball from Moran just a minute from half-time and cut the margin to three, 1-2 to 1-5. But instead of steadying and getting to the break in one piece Dublin coughed up a goal within two minutes.
This time Barry Cahill allowed Tommy McGuigan in along the endline and he picked out Joe McMahon, who took full advantage of flailing cover to score. At 2-5 to 1-3, the match was over.
Tyrone knew it and opened the second half with confident points from Dooher, Tommy McGuigan and McCullagh. Dublin's response was to introduce defender Paul Casey into the attack but a couple of minutes later the Tyrone wing back Davy Harte, on a characteristic upfield sortie, was picked out by McCullagh and cantered in on goal before pulling the trigger.
For Dublin all that was left was recrimination as players openly squabbled. Tyrone's future is happier - a semi-final against a Wexford side new to that level and the distinct possibility of a third All-Ireland final in six years.
TYRONE: 1 J Devine; 6 C Gormley (0-1), 3 Justin McMahon, 4 C Gourley; 5 D Harte (1-1), 2 R McMenamin, 7 P Jordan; 9 E McGinley (0-1), 20 C Holmes; 10 B Dooher (capt, 0-3), 11 B McGuigan, 12 Joe McMahon (1-1); 13 T McGuigan (0-2), 14 S Cavanagh (1-2, one free), 15 C McCullagh (0-3). Subs: 28 M Penrose for T McGuigan (56 mins), 23 D McCaul for Jordan (63 mins), 8 R Mellon for Dooher (65 mins), 21 K Hughes for Holmes (66 mins), 26 O Mulligan for B McGuigan (68 mins).
DUBLIN: 1 S Cluxton; 2 D Henry, 3 R McConnell, 4 P Griffin; 7 B Cahill (0-1), 6 B Cullen, 5 C Moran; 8 C Whelan, 9 S Ryan; 14 C Keaney (1-1), 11 J Sherlock, 12 C Bonner; 15 T Quinn (0-2, both frees), 10 D Connolly, 13 A Brogan (capt). Subs: 22 B Brogan (0-3) for A Brogan (7 mins), 17 P Casey for Connolly (48 mins), 23 M Vaughan (0-1, free) for Sherlock (54 mins), 24 B McMenamon for Quinn (54 mins), 20 E Fennell for McConnell (63 mins).
YELLOW CARDS: Tyrone: Cavanagh (36 mins); Dublin: Cahill (7 mins), Bonner (18 mins), Whelan (37 mins), McConnell (46 mins). RED CARDS: None.
Referee: Aidan Mangan (Kerry).
Attendance: 70,877.
