It’s a long-established fact that removing the native Dub from his triangular habitat of home, pub and Hill for a championship game in early summer is a pleasing, Victorian kind of stimulus to self-improvement. It’s squeezing all the warmest stuff of the summer into one big day out. The Dub enjoys the fresh air, any exposure to unfamiliar, exotic accents and ready access to cheaper pints. In every way imaginable these trips are a contrary sort of thing for his team, not in terms of the result but how to read them.
If Carlow and all the assumptions about playing a Division Four team are removed from the conversation over last Saturday night’s game, Dublin held them to two points in the entire second half. They still kicked 19 points against a defence kitted out with double sweepers and fanatical flying columns of defenders converging on any Dub in possession. That equates almost exactly to their average points tally in Leinster across 15 games under Jim Gavin. Holding Carlow to seven points also matched their tightest defensive performances across the same period — Gavin’s first championship game in charge against Westmeath in 2013.
Yet it’s all highly conditional. Carlow set up to avoid a hammering and devised a smart game plan to keep pace with Dublin as long as they could.
Once Brendan Murphy was sent off with 25 minutes to go, they had almost no one left to carry the ball into attack. That left them like a tiring boxer, pinned to the ropes, struggling to throw out a relieving jab.
Pick through the Dublin team, a few played well. Plenty more laboured along and a couple had stinkers. They approached Carlow’s blanket defence with the patience and forbearance learnt from years unravelling them, but took a long time breaking it down. It was their fitness and power that won in the end, not their football.
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Then there’s another Diarmuid Connolly thing. If he’s charged for planting his hand on the linesman’s chest while disputing a line ball, there’ll be questions. If he’s not, more questions.
The reaction on Sunday was a familiar rush to defend his actions. Connolly had been goaded into losing the rag by Carlow players all night. He barely made contact with Ciaran Branagan, the linesman. Even before one torch was lit or pitchfork taken up, any criticism of Connolly was already being deemed a witch hunt.
The penalty for making any kind of contact with an official is 12 weeks. The contact between Connolly and Branagan was mild, but the rule doesn’t distinguish. The punishment isn’t designed for any kind of nuance, it’s a blunt weapon of deterrent. If the incident isn’t revisited and allowed to blow over, Connolly has got a major break. If the charge comes down it’s hard to see how he can avoid a ban that will destroy his summer.
Even if nothing transpires, it’s a reminder of the sort of stuff that usually derails a team on the road as long as Dublin. Compare their year so far with Kerry in 2008, the last team who made a gallop at three-in-a-row. Back then Kerry lost a winnable league final to Derry. Check. Kerry made that final mixing and matching teams due to injuries and their under-21s winning an All-Ireland title, pulling the odd game from the fire. Check.
Their first championship game was a victory against Clare without any frills. Check. That was also the day that Paul Galvin got entangled with referee Paddy Russell, incurred a gigantic suspension and Kerry lost an essential component of their team till September. Possible check.
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The way that year panned out for Kerry is exactly the kind of contrary season Dublin must avoid now. Cork pulled back a big lead in the Munster final to beat Kerry and dragged them through two wearying matches in the All-Ireland semi-final. before finally getting tipped over by Tyrone. Worst of all for Kerry, they let games they were controlling unfold needlessly into contests. They knew all that trouble was avoidable, but they were getting tired and cranky.
There was plenty of that during the league for Dublin, and a touch of the same frustration the other night. Carlow did well to disrupt them, but Dublin were bouncing shots off posts, missing sitters and generally stumbling along for a fair stretch. They’ll look across at the other side of the draw and see Kildare improving and reaching optimum fitness under Cian O’Neill and Meath kicking 27 points against Louth. Kildare and Meath will also improve each other when they meet. Whoever makes the Leinster final might have the momentum and sheer raw temper to make it an awkward and potentially damaging day for Dublin. At this stage of their life, they don’t need that.
Connolly’s future will pan out whatever way it will. Dublin need now to grab tight hold of whatever they can control. A good season for Dublin will be founded again on everything that has made them great: monastic devotion to hard work and executing the most basic skills quicker and more fluently than anyone else, and a cast-iron conviction about their ability to win any game anywhere, anyhow. That was all there Saturday night as well, but every year demands more. They will always believe it’s in them.
We’ll find out some day soon.