After their fourth home loss in a row, the Dubs pulled as friendly a draw as they could have expected in Round 2B.
Though it’d be hard to trust them entirely against Cavan, who did, at last, show some signs of life away to Westmeath, taking the Leinster champions to the brink.
Dublin ran up a big score in Kingspan Breffni in a group stage game a couple of years ago though the mood was very different then.
Taking everything into account, you’d expect them to survive this round but it’s fair to say that nothing can be assumed anymore.
At least Dublin might be relieved that the draw has taken them out of Croke Park.
Alongside their many other problems, I’m not sure the vast open spaces in Croker suit their team and its age profile at this stage.
Nor can the stark reality that the Dubs’ bandwagon has abandoned them be doing much for morale in the camp. 16,000 or so is a shocking crowd for a Dublin home game and it has to be factored in that a decent portion of that were Louth supporters.
It’s a far cry from the hype and the razzmatazz that followed the Dubs around in our era of tussling with them.
They used to get huge crowds back in the Pillar Caffrey era and that was before they had started winning All-Irelands.
Although at least then there was a sense that they were on an upward curve and were striving towards something. Whereas now they’ve gorged on success and there’s a sense that the team is on the slide.
Craig Lennon drills home the decisive Louth goal
Those of us whose careers fell in the 2010s are inclined to feel bittersweet about this turn of events. “How well the f*****s had to wait til now to collapse!” I did say to Manzy on punditry duty in Clones last Sunday.
But I do think it was always going to happen. There was a lot of panic back in our playing careers that Dublin dominance was going to be a permanent fact of life from then until eternity. I always thought it sounded a bit of a stretch.
Sport doesn’t tend to work like that. It’s very hard to sustain that level of dominance – and the Dubs sustained it for long enough. But eventually, great teams will break apart, key players drift off, golden generations are replaced by a callow, less gifted crop.
At the same time, rival teams are working, learning and adapting. Their hunger grows, while it wanes for the team who’ve had their fill of success.
It’s true for every dominant team/franchise across the sporting world.
On top of that, the Dublin underage machine doesn’t appear to be what it was back in the early 2010s. We all heard about the Ciarán Kilkenny and Jack McCaffrey era of Dublin players at the turn of the last decade.
But success has been thin enough on the ground in recent years, at provincial level never mind at the All-Ireland stage.
Throw into that mix the arrival of the new rules – which were introduced at a moment when many of the greats of the last decade were coming to the end of their careers and the younger players were struggling to step into the breach.
In that sense, it could be argued that they came at the worst possible time for Dublin. The older crop had perfected the game under the pre-FRC rules but so much changed last year.
Con O’Callaghan finding the net against Louth
Now, some caveats. Their attack can be slick on its day, they moved the ball pretty well in the first half when they got going. Con O’Callaghan was in excellent form.
A couple of opening halves have been decent this season, notably in the league matches against Roscommon and Armagh. However, they’ve struggled to maintain that over 70 minutes.
They will have Ger Brennan back available on the sideline after his ridiculously severe punishment for his wrestling match in Pearse Stadium.
We did wonder whether they’d be able to use the sense of injustice from Brennan’s punishment (and we know they’re feeling that from Niall Moyna’s comments yesterday) as a galvanising factor. But there was no real sense of that last Sunday.
Most of all, their defence is incredibly porous. Anxiety seems to pervade their defence every time a team runs at them. There’s a jitteriness about their play back there, typified by Craig Lennon’s decisive goal in the closing minutes, a brutal goal for any team to concede.
Dare I say it, when a team gets a run on them, they look even more open than Mayo, which is no small claim to make.
Mayo did at least avail of the winners path for Round 2 though the second-half implosion again flagged up serious issues at the back. A characteristically crazy game, though probably not unexpected when you consider the teams involved.
The first half could hardly have gone better, with Ryan O’Donoghue and Kobe McDonald raining over glorious two-pointers. The wind was strong enough but you felt Mayo had built up a sufficient cushion.
That looked even more the case midway through the second half. How Monaghan still trailed by a heavy margin was a mystery given the welter of goal chances in the first few minutes after the restart. Jack Livingstone had a stellar debut and was my Man of the Match – I was overruled – and somehow Mayo’s net had yet to bulge.
Kobe McDonald fields the last kickout in Clones
Then the explosive Bobby McCaul slipped home a goal and the final quarter was a frenzy.
Mayo didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory with how they managed the endgame. I suppose some allowance can be made for the fact that it was Monaghan. They have a wildness and a fearlessness which unsettles even the best teams down the stretch.
In the end, it came down to Kobe fielding the ball in midfield on the final play and we could relax again. Andy Moran looked somewhere between relieved and confused at the final whistle. For Mayo supporters, it left more questions than answers.
We’ll see what answers we can get in Omagh in the next round. Mayo puled off an impressive win over Tyrone at the same venue last year even if it couldn’t save them. As ever, the form-guide is of limited use.