THE MIDDLE THIRD:The composure of players like Bernard Brogan and the team's superior fitness helped Dublin edge over the line in a terrible game that wasn't helped by a poor refereeing performance

I WENT to two games in Dublin over the weekend. In both of them, 30 fellas leathered lumps out of each other, all of them chasing after the ball at the same time and with very little structure that I could work out sitting in the stands.

The main difference was Ronan O’Gara and Jonny Wilkinson could at least kick straight in the rugby match at the Aviva on Saturday. I couldn’t say the same for very many of the players I watched in Croke Park the next day.

I’ve never seen a game like Dublin v Donegal before, one where for most of the game a backward pass was more effective than a forward pass. It was almost surreal to watch, fascinating in one way because of how the two teams set up, but terrible stuff at the same time.

Donegal have received a huge amount of criticism over how many men they got behind the ball but Dublin weren’t blameless either. Colm McFadden must have been thinking he was the best footballer in the country because there were times Dublin had three players marking him.

To see it from their point of view for a minute, it’s easy enough to get a handle on where both teams were coming from. When you’re mixing paint, you have to use the right colours. Dublin were always going to have to see for themselves how Donegal would come at that before committing to a plan themselves so I can see why they would have kept a few men back in the first half. But it made for horrific viewing.

I would still defend the right of both managers to set their teams up in whatever way they think will get results but even so, there’s a wider picture to think about.

Say you’re a young coach taking over a club team that has done nothing for a few years and is in the right frame of mind for a big idea or a big change. Well, this is a very effective short cut to success.

I don’t mean that it’s lazy because it surely isn’t – players need huge fitness and commitment to pull it off.

And actually, Dublin were fitter than Donegal on Sunday, which was a big reason they came through in the closing stages.

But in a results-based business, it will guarantee you keep every game close and, because other teams aren’t used to it on such a big scale, you’ll probably win more than you lose. Donegal have made very little impression on the championship in recent years but they came within a kick of a ball of an All-Ireland final this time around. That’s a remarkable rise in a short space of time and I can see plenty of coaches out there looking at them and deciding there’s a ready-made template there to work off.

This will tell you what an odd game it was – Kerry shouldn’t waste a minute thinking about it between now and the final. I think it’s a game to be completely disregarded just because it was so out of the ordinary. It was just a one-off and it will mean nothing come the final.

Dublin set themselves up for Donegal on Sunday, not for Kerry. Had they taken Donegal for granted, they would have been beaten but they didn’t and they weren’t.

When it comes to the final, their form against Tyrone will be a better pointer.

Even allowing for them paying Donegal all due respect, Dublin were overly conservative in the first half. They stood and let Donegal take their best shot before coming back at them, knowing they were fit enough to come through at the end.

I actually thought watching the game that if Dublin were a bit more adventurous, they could have won by a lot more. But instead, they decided to play the game on Donegal’s terms and trusted that they’d come out the other end of it. That decision had as much of an effect on the spectacle as Donegal’s set-up had.

At one point, Bernard Brogan took possession under the Hogan Stand and although five Donegal men converged upon him, there was no Dublin player inside the 65-metre line. If you stopped the DVD there in front of a room of young lads and asked them what options Brogan had in that split second, they’d know instinctively he was done for.

That ball was either going out over the sideline or Brogan was going to run into traffic or kick a Hail Mary shot. And all because Dublin weren’t getting players forward to help him out.

The main reason Dublin won in the end was players like Brogan kept their heads. He made the play of the game with his kick-pass across goal for Bryan Cullen’s point. He was under pressure, getting swarmed like he had been all day, fighting traffic as he was trying to look around him and yet he still managed to pick out a left-footed pass to Cullen for the crucial point that put Dublin ahead.

Doing that after all that had gone before was a sign of class and he went way up in my estimation on Sunday.

I’ve always thought he was a fine footballer but I still wouldn’t have classed him in the absolute top rank of players in the country. But the way he came through what must have been one of the least enjoyable games of his life was very impressive.

He knew he was going to have three or four fellas around him every time he touched the ball and that he was going to take plenty of hits and flakes all the way through. But he showed a level of maturity in his game on Sunday that I didn’t think was there beforehand.

I would have hated to play in that game. From a midfielder’s point of view, it wasn’t a game to relish at all, even though most of the play was between the two 45s.

There were hardly any kick-outs contested because both goalkeepers were usually happy to just flick out a short ball to one of the four defenders free in their full-back line.

All the usual rules of thumb went out the window. There was no accountability. Who was marking Cullen? Who was marking any of them? I feel I have a decent grasp of how the game is played and yet sitting in the stand, I couldn’t work out who was taking responsibility for stopping specific players in the opposition.

It was collective rather than man-to-man, obviously, but even so, surely at some point you have to be accountable to your peers if your man gets in a for a score? I’ve never seen a game like it before.

It wasn’t helped by the referee either. This is the point I’ve been making here all summer – a referee can make or break a game by the attitude he takes to it. Sometimes, all a referee needs to do is let a game flow and that will make it. But if ever a game needed breaking, it was this one.

Maurice Deegan just let far too many things slide, from stray slaps to kicking the ball away to just pure fouling that was let go as tackling.

Small things like that add up to a frustrating game. But even when it came to the big decisions, he sent off Diarmuid Connolly for nothing more than what a few Donegal players were doing the whole time. I just felt he kept the game tighter than it should have been and the net result was that Donegal stayed closer than a team scoring six points in an All-Ireland semi-final had any right to be.

Connolly was unlucky to go and if I was him I’d be raging at missing out on the final on the back of it. But Dublin shouldn’t waste too much time or energy trying to get him cleared for the final. That kind of thing can take your attention away from what you’re preparing for.

I remember back a few years ago when Paul Galvin got suspended after, well, let’s just say it was the time the referee dropped his notebook in Killarney. There was an attempt to try and get his suspension shortened and the whole thing had a bearing on our preparation for matches that summer. It turned into a big thing in the county. People would be stopping you to ask if Paul was going to be cleared and the whole thing became a distraction.

Dublin can’t afford that going into the final, even though it’s harsh on Connolly. Given the context of that game on Sunday, where there were Donegal men who played the game far rougher and did plenty more belting than him, it’s hard to argue he deserved to be the one who walked. There was much of a muchness between what he did and what some of the rest of them did in the game. What’s good for the goose should have been good for the gander.

But Dublin will have to move on and get ready for the final we were all afraid to mention before the Donegal game.

Dublin GAA is on a high now with teams in the minor finals in both hurling and football and now a senior final against Kerry to look forward to. Semi-finals are always games to be forgotten, never more so than this one.

As I was walking into Croke Park on Sunday, I saw Kevin Moran go through the gate ahead of me. He was always a hero of mine, although probably more as a Man United and Ireland player than as a Dub. He and Kevin Heffernan had a big hug for each other, like they maybe hadn’t seen each other in a while.

There was a real warmth between the two of them, the kind of thing that lasts for years after a great team breaks up. It was a lovely moment, probably the highlight of the day for me. Mind you, that wouldn’t be hard, given the game that followed.