No wonder he described it as an “onslaught”.
Laois manager Mick Lillis would have laid out his plans as best he could and within five minutes the heart was ripped out of his team with two Dublin goals.
Diarmuid Connolly would finish with 1-4 from play, Ciaran Kilkenny 0-4. Dean Rock would weigh in with 1-10 in total (0-6 from frees).
On a day when an off-colour Bernard Brogan was held scoreless, the Dublin attack marched on without so much as stopping to pick the Laois defenders out of their studs.
By half-time they had put 2-12 on the scoreboard – a hurling rate of scores in the home of the Kilkenny Cats. So what if they only out-scored Laois by 0-14 to 2-6 in the 43 minutes played after John O’Loughlin was sent off for striking Michael Darragh Macauley?
However Lillis was left ruing the slow start, which saw Rock find the net within 20 seconds and Connolly add a second within five minutes.
“We planned in a certain way and other than the 2 goals, for the first 27 minutes of the game there was very little between the teams but they were sucker punches. We planned to not let in goals but it didn’t work out,” he said.
“I don’t think fear is the right word,” he added. “We didn’t cope with their onslaught. They were fast, their running game was strong. It just took us a little bit longer to get into that than we liked and we paid for it accordingly.”
But Lillis is not writing off the Leinster Championship thus yet.
“Dublin are a very good side, they are a quality side, but they won’t get it all their own way. It is not the foregone conclusion that a lot of people think it is,” he said, before adding.
“They will take some beating.”
https://twitter.com/SportsJOE_GAA/status/739190133161873408
Gavin, for his part, was happy overall, if not altogether impressed with the second half slowdown.
“I wouldn’t be happy with it and the players themselves wouldn’t be happy with that second half performance and it certainly gives us things to focus on in the weeks ahead,” said the Dublin manager, who confirmed Paul Flynn did not start due to a tightness felt in the warm-up.
