The face never changes.
Jim Gavin may as well as have seen his team win by 15 points as by the eight they eventually did, but his outer game-face always stays the same.
Stony but always thinking, the Dublin manager would easily win a staring contest, but there was little to catch the eye in today’s All-Ireland quarter final victory over Fermanagh.
Discount for a moment the two late goals that Dublin coughed up – one with more than a hint of illegality – and you get a better idea of the nature of the game and the ease of Dublin’s win.
That goal merely seemed to stir the hornet’s nest, and Dublin stung their opponents with a goal of their own just minutes later, before a total brain-fart between Cluxton and his defenders led to the concession of a second.
In the record books, Dublin’s eight point win may lead a historian to believe that the game was close, but it was a match that had the feel of little more than a training session no matter what Fermanagh did in the last fifteen minutes.
There will be no training session feel to a semi final against either Mayo or Donegal.
It says something when Dublin fans would consider an eight-point win a ‘scare’.
But they should be concerned when they see how Mayo and Donegal will line up next week in a proper quarter final played at pace, intensity, and full of physicality as well as niggle.
Donegal have by far the hardest route of any side to an All-Ireland final if they get there, and even though Galway threw everything at them, they are still standing.
Their jaw has been tested so many times that usually only the killer punch of goals – and more than one – can knock last year’s Ulster champions out conclusively.
Mayo, for all their defensive faults of conceding 2-11 to Sligo, still racked up 6-25 at the other end, and have had plenty of time to work out trying to break down a defensive set-up.
Donegal may not have many gears left to go up through but Dublin and Jim Gavin’s bother is not so much if his team can move up through the gears but that they will remember how to engage the clutch and put their foot to the floor to get the momentum needed for a shift in performance.
Gavin has been hoping his side would get a close game all year in the championship but it has yet to happen.
Today’s result will give him some food for thought but it’s his players switching off more than anything at either end of the field that should be the key focus of training for the next few weeks.
He could even afford to be bench his best midfielder Michael Darragh McAuley today for 35 minutes and still coast to the win.
But does he really know how his team would fare against counter-punching side or a team with the attacking talents of Kerry and Mayo or the defensive shape and discipline of a Monaghan?
Dublin are victims of their own success and what are they to do when teams won’t mark their players, give Bernard Brogan a five yard start and then not expect to be whipped?
In case you didn't know this is not how you mark Bernard Brogan. 1-4 to 0-1 after 15 mins. pic.twitter.com/nRXRMiSBVV
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) August 2, 2015
Nothing. They can do nothing and that’s why the league is so important to them to work on the issues presented to them by a team like Derry which looking back now, and the league semi final with Monaghan, appear to be Dublin’s toughest days out in 2015 so far.
Kerry did beat them well in the league but, with no Cluxton to pull the strings that afternoon, the game has an asterix beside it.
The GAA used to claim that the August Bank holiday weekend was the real start of the championship, but let’s be honest.
For two of the six sides left the race for Sam will only begin later this month while next week we’ll know how serious their ambitions for September glory are.
Dublin needed a test but they didn’t get it and the longer the year goes on the more worried Gavin must be that his side are facing yet another semi final shock to the system.
How does he know that, if his team are beaten at midfield, they can still cope? How will his side transition from defence to attack when put under pressure?
He has no idea and that for Dublin is the biggest concern heading into an All-Ireland semi final.
