March 25, Parnell Park

Dublin's enigmatic League form continued with a comprehensive victory over Mayo at Parnell Park. This assured them of avoiding relegation and even held out the very slim possibility of making the play-offs. That would require a Dublin victory of five points or more over Kerry, and Tyrone losing at least one of their remaining matches by a similar margin. All we needed was for the other four teams in the equation to get with the programme. Especially Kerry.

Mayo had been flying in the league up to this point. They began with a victory over Kerry in Tralee and were unbeaten coming to Parnell Park. Already there were some within the county who were consigning their defeats at the hands of Kerry in 2004 and 2005 to the darkened attic, and already talking up their chances of winning the All Ireland. You have to hand it to them I suppose. Incurable optimists after all they've seen.

Given their form to this, and the fact that they were more or less assured a play-off place anyway, you might not have thought that Mayo would be particularly upset over their defeat. That, however, was not immediately obvious from Mickey Moran's remarks after the match. I don't know. Maybe it is because I was reared on Dublin and Meath and Kerry. Whatever they might have thought, Boylan and Heffernan and O'Dwyer didn't excuse defeats by blaming the referee for penalties and sendings off. Not in public anyway. "I'm not taking away from our opponents victory. But ....". I am really! Not that that would be a traditional Mayo attitude either.

It was interesting to see Mayo's insistence on hand passing the ball from one end of the pitch being criticised as the wrong tactic for dodgy underfoot conditions. Interesting for the reason that it was Cork's more effective, fast and direct use of the same game plan that laid the basis for their defeat of Dublin a few weeks back. Perhaps Mayo were attempting to over-egg the pudding by a determined resistance to the notion of attempting kicked passes. Apparently one Mayo observer counted 109 hand passes before he gave up in despair and was carted off to the riddlies. Whatever the case, Dublin were generally able to smother Mayo attacks and were incisive in the counter-attack.

Mayo began better and established an early lead. Dublin's problems were then compounded when Whelan was forced to go off after seven or eight minutes with a bad knee. Things might have appeared grim. The Dublin management obviously have huge faith in Mark Vaughan and he repaid it with a good display in his first full senior match in the county jersey. All credit to him as well for having overcome a good deal of criticism for some of his recent performances. Vaughan was instrumental in two of the goals where his clever use of his strength won possession. The first came at a vital stage soon after the departure of Whelan. He shouldered John Nallen off the ball and transferred it to Declan Lally who in turn found Quinn who made no mistake in beating Healy in the Mayo goal. The next Dublin attack ended with Paul Griffin being fouled in the square and Quinn converting the penalty. What followed seemed like the script from a familiar old play. Dublin began to throw the ball around stylishly. Mayo folded up their tent. Perhaps that is unkind as they did put up some resistance.

Conal Keaney got another goal for Dublin and the game ended with a splendid effort from Alan Brogan. He gathered the ball about 40 metres out near the sideline after it had evaded two Mayo players. He set off alone into the gaping space before him before slamming it past the hapless Healy. That drew the biggest cheer of the night and sent us Dubs in the capacity crowd home or back to the pubs. And to ponder anew on the mystery that is this team.