Cullen only change as Gilroy sticks to blueprint

CHAMPIONSHIP 2009 NEWS: STRIKE ONE, Dublin! With reputations riding on Monday's All-Ireland football quarter-final, every move counts. So Pat Gilroy, the Dublin manager, waited until the opposition announced their team, then based his team around it. And they think they're cute in Kerry.

“Actually, we’d picked our team before the Kerry team came out, after training on Wednesday, and we’re only announcing it here,” said Gilroy at yesterday’s pre-match press conference.

“No matter which team Kerry name, they’ve an awful lot of options, an awful lot of good footballers. They can mix things up, and even with the team they pick, they can have variations in that. You’ve to be as conscious of the guys on the sideline as well, you’ve got to deal with all of that. So we’ve just been concentrating on ourselves, to build on our own game.”

Take that back then. But that’s Gilroy for you. Calm and fancy- free. It’s not rocket science, lads. It’s common sense. And the one thing Gilroy has restored to the Dublin set-up is the idea that games are won on the football field, not in the bunker room. So rather than mess with a winning formula, Gilroy has made just one enforced change from the team that beat Kildare, with Bryan Cullen named at centre back for the suspended Ger Brennan.

“Still, it was very hard to pick,” he added. “A lot of fellas have been pushing really hard since the Leinster final for inclusion. But we’ve still picked it on form. The guys there are doing well, but there’s still a lot of pressure on places. We’d a lot of options. But then we’d been kind of working to that team over the last couple of weeks, and it has been going well in training.”

But we haven’t driven all the way out to St Claire’s in DCU to be told nothing, so we quiz Gilroy about Kerry, from every conceivable angle, starting with the fact Dublin haven’t beaten them in the championship since 1977. Surely that weighs on the Dublin players?

“I don’t know. How relevant is a 32-year span, when for a long time in the 90s we had no games against Kerry in the championship? Certainly the guys are just focusing on where we’re at. We don’t win any prizes on Monday. It’s about going on further in the championship.

“But when you’re involved with a group, you really do focus on the here and now. What happened 30 years just has no relevance at all. Having come from a club where some people thought the burden of history was affecting the modern St Vincent’s, at the end of the day, if you’re good enough, you’ll win. If you’re not good enough you won’t win. That’s nothing to do with history.”

So are Dublin good enough to beat Kerry? The respective form of either team suggests they are – that this may actually be Dublin’s best chance to beat them since 1977.

“I think Kerry have actually navigated the qualifiers quite well, and obviously trained quite hard during them. Maybe they weren’t as sprightly as they might be, but I expect them to be moving very well this weekend.

“You’ve to look at the overall context of their year (in league and championship). They’ve lost one game, and drawn two games, and they’ve beaten everybody else. And that includes all the top teams. They didn’t become a bad team from the end of the league to the start of the championship.

“Maybe they’ve gearing themselves for this, and I don’t think it’s an awful lot to expect a good performance from Kerry on Monday. Their form has been they’ve beaten everyone, bar one team. I just think they’ll be massively up for this. And so will we.”

No one could argue with the way Dublin finished their Leinster final against Kildare, but it’s no surprise to hear Gilroy is not getting carried away.

So experienced players like Ciarán Whelan, Tomás Quinn and Shane Ryan are again kept in reserve, with the full list of Dublin substitutes to be confirmed over the weekend. Business as usual, just as Gilroy would have called it.

DUBLIN(SF v Kerry): S Cluxton; D Henry, D Bastick, P Andrews; P Griffin, B Cullen, B Cahill; R McConnell, D Magee; P Flynn, D Connolly, B Brogan; A Brogan, C Keaney, J Sherlock.