Clinical Dublin show no mercy

Dublin: 2-20 - V Murphy 1-3; J Gavin 0-6 (five frees); P Curran 1-1; J Sherlock 0-3; D Darcy 0-2; B Stynes, C Whelan, J McGee (45), C Moran, D Homan 0-1 each.

Wexford: 1-8 - L O'Brien 0-4 (all frees); J Lawlor 1-0; J Hegarty 0-2; S Doran, T Howlin 0-1 each.

Referee: P McEneaney (Monaghan).

Booked: Dublin - S Ryan, V Murphy. Wexford - C Morris, S O'Shaughnessy, J Berry, N Morris.

Forewarned is forearmed. The way some of Gaelic football's perceived heavyweights have been trodding on egg shells so far this summer, it was little wonder that Dublin refused to take any chances in opening their Bank of Ireland Leinster championship campaign with a clinical - if by no means perfect - performance that resulted in the inevitable dismissal of round-robin survivors Wexford.

For the guts of half an hour, Dublin shadow-boxed with their opponents at Croke Park yesterday. Then, in the final six minutes of the opening half, they cut loose with no-nonsense football that combined precision with class and yielded 1-5 without reply. In that swift but bloody period, the match was won and lost.

"We prepared for this much as we would for any other team. You have to, otherwise the players sense it and you end up getting caught," said Dublin manager Tom Carr after as comfortable a passage into the provincial semi-final (against Westmeath) as he could have expected. In truth, Dublin had few scary moments. As you'd expect, Wexford - with the benefit of three matches in the qualifying series - gave as good as they got for much of the first half and were clinging on gamely until Paul Curran's 25th minute goal, after a deft one-two with Jason Sherlock, enabled Dublin to sprint clear.

It was fitting that both Curran - "I don't know what Paul was doing that far forward," joked Carr - and Sherlock were the main players in Dublin's opening goal. Curran had one of those days when it looked as if he had turned the clock back a decade. Sherlock, in fact, also had a big influence on Dublin's first-half performance. Not only did he engineer plenty of space for himself, and leave his marker Colm Morris floundering in his wake for most of the time, but he also acted as provider to those around him when the need arose. Into the bargain, Sherlock managed to rediscover his shooting boots and was able to balance a couple of his inevitable wides with some succinctly taken points.

With a nine points cushion at half time, Dublin were guilty of being slightly asleep on the resumption. The Hill 16 crowd at the opposite end of the ground were jeering a mis-hit Leigh O'Brien free kick when Jonathan McGee and Paddy Christie got their signals mixed-up and the ball fell for Jason Lawlor to blast home his side's goal within a minute of the re-start. Not only did it silence the Dublin supporters, but it provoked Wexford into a minor comeback and Tom Howlin and O'Brien swiftly added points to reduce the gap to four points and, for a brief moment, it seemed that the underdogs were getting ready to bite.

But Dublin had enough conviction to reassert themselves and the prodigal son himself, Vinny Murphy, who was drafted into the side prior to the throw-in for the injured Ian Robertson, played a bigger role as the match progressed. It was he who halted the Wexford sequence of scores after a fine solo run from Coman Goggins, and then, as one Dublin player after another helped himself to points, Murphy was the man on hand in the 66th minute to slot home his side's second goal after Sherlock's shot rebounded off an upright.

Dublin did what they had to do yesterday, and that is win. The victory, rather than the manner of it, was most important to Carr. "I know," he said, "that we are moving up to another level, another notch, for the match with Westmeath. We'll have to be even more prepared that day." It wasn't a day when Dublin were prepared to slip on banana skins or find themselves on the casualty scrapheap of Championship 2000. They didn't.