Dubs fail to inspire against Offaly

I have been involved in about a dozen games between Dublin and Offaly as a manager and have watched at least as many more encounters, but I have never seen such a fiasco of a game as the one we had to endure in Croke Park yesterday.

We got a totally unstructured game in which both teams made all the mistakes that coaches try to get young players to avoid.

Woeful efforts at scoring points from the easiest of opportunities inside 30 or even 20 yards, shocking attempts at foot and even hand-passing which often went directly to an opponent, deplorable man-marking, particularly by Offaly, led to a diabolical display of Gaelic football from two traditional football powers of Leinster.

Dublin won, which is all that matters to them, and the GAA, but what influence this fiasco will have on Dublin's future outings is hard to estimate. This was a woeful performance from the Leinster champions and let's be straight about it, but for them getting a freak goal just after half-time they would have been hanging on for dear life at the end.

The fact that they were not is because the Offaly forward line was marked absent for the greater part of the game, which meant that despite their own poor scoring rate, Dublin were always able to stay in front.

Just how poor those Offaly forwards were is shown by the fact that they had only six points on the board with 65 minutes gone and even at the end when they had moved on to 10 points, only two forwards (Niall McNamee and substitute Sean Ryan) scored from play.

The Dublin backs played a big part in that pathetic scoring performance but even they will not look back with much satisfaction on their performance and the mentors will surely wonder how Offaly got in for numerous goal-scoring chances, none of which they could take.

I am sure some Dublin fans will claim that their team played as well as they needed to and won handily, but that would be running away from the truth. Dublin were expected to win this game with conviction and style. Instead they got involved in a slogging match from the very start and were unable to rise above that level even though they were much better in that department than Offaly and did fully deserve their victory.

But when you are going for your third successive Leinster title, as Dublin are, you need to be imposing your will forcibly in the province to boost morale for the real championship which starts after the provincial finals. Dublin needed to play with a bit of panache yesterday, get a serious amount of top-class scores and show the potential at least to be All-Ireland champions, like previous sides have done.

Bog of Allen

The trend of this game was decided in the opening 10 minutes when Offaly started badly and their defence was as open as the Bog of Allen. It was then that Dublin should have imposed their superiority and put up a big score, but instead they were erratic in attack and only scored three points in the opening 12 minutes, with no sign of a goal. This set the trend and it went from that to worse as the game wore on.

It took Offaly all of 19 minutes to get their first score from a free by McNamee and the same player completed their first-half scoring in the 27th minute from play. By that stage Dublin had moved on to a meagre six points - poor reward for the amount of attacks they had.

There is a crucial statistic relating to frees which may give an indication of Dublin's problems yesterday. They conceded 17 frees in the first half and 15 in the second for a total of 32. Offaly, on the other hand, only gave away nine and seven for a total of 16. So why did Dublin foul twice as many times as Offaly? It could well be that their players were physically and mentally tired after the Meath games, particularly as they had only seven days to recover. It is an interesting point in view of the levels of fitness that all these top county teams are supposed to have. Of course Dublin may have simply fouled so often for tactical reasons.

Offaly can justifiably claim that some of their attacking failure can be attributed to the departure through injury of Thomas Deehan, whose combination with Niall McNamee has been effective but they will be disappointed with the display of recent recruit PJ Ward, who was blotted out by improving Dublin full-back Ross McConnell.

Mark Vaughan was the man under the spotlight after his sterling play against Meath, but as has happened so often with this Dublin side, he was not played initially at centre-forward as the usual switches continued.

Woeful efforts at scoring, shocking attempts at foot- and even hand-passing, and deplorable man-marking

led to a

diabolical displayVaughan made a good contribution but was nowhere as spectacular as against Meath and, like his colleagues, had some bad wides.

The dubious honour of the worst shot of the day has to go to Collie Moran, who when set up by Alan Brogan managed to kick the ball wide from less than 20 yards in the 51st minute. However, he had keen competition for that 'accolade' from several Offaly forwards.

If one wanted one moment to signify in practical terms the indecision that often gripped Dublin yesterday, there was an incident in the 33rd minute when Alan Brogan was in possession about 55 yards out from Offaly's goal. He did a couple of stationary toe taps but could see no colleague to pass to and instead was blown up for overplaying the ball. It was that sort of game yesterday - for both teams.

The results of yesterday's game vary extremely for each team. Dublin are back in the Leinster final and after three dogged-type games, are well equipped to retain their title but will need to start playing better football if they are serious about winning Sam Maguire.

Offaly will play in the Tommy Murphy Cup and head into Division 4 league football next February.

If one of Brian Cody's friends, the referees' assessors, was on duty yesterday he should have a very full notebook to send on to headquarters after the performance of Michael Collins, who was far too fussy, and by blowing even the first cousin of a foul, only added to the mediocrity of this game.

It was also sad to hear the intense booing and jeering of Niall McNamee each time he lined up a free kick, something that never happened at Dublin-Offaly games in the past.

An unimpressive victory for Dublin but nevertheless a deserved one, and their ability to hang in there in unfavourable situations, as they have done against Meath and Offaly, is an important attribute that should not be underestimated by anybody.

Make no mistake about it - this Dublin team is going to be hard to beat.