When the dust has settled on Sunday it’s as well to remember Dublin looked distinctly superior when they were at full strength

DUBLIN FOOTBALLERS could probably at this stage take out copyright on the phrase déjà vu. They have been “turning the corner” more frequently and fruitlessly than the national economy, except for even longer.

“What do we have to do? We had chances in the last 15 or 20 minutes to win it. We kicked them away. I can’t think of a specific reason why we lose big games; we keep coming back but we don’t seem to have the luck.” These timeless words belong to goalkeeper John O’Leary after the 1994 All-Ireland defeat by Down and encapsulate the sense of baffled despair that accompanies serial disappointment. Happily within 12 months the All-Ireland was finally won; less happily it hasn’t been won since, prompting many more timeless words in the interim.

On Sunday manager Pat Gilroy reacted sharply to the inevitable question about the team’s mental fault-lines although his subsequent teasing out of the challenge ahead to restore morale was more considered. When he has more time to ponder the lessons of the league final defeat, chances are he will have a more constructive view of what has been achieved in the season to date.

Even on Sunday there was plenty of evidence Dublin have the beating of Cork should the teams meet in the championship. But Cork have developed an impressive line in doing enough to save matches and also an unflappable ability to turn possession into scores – 18 from play in a national final. All forwards apart from the clearly-injured Paul Kerrigan scored from play and they never panicked despite the scale of the required comeback.

Dublin blew an eight-point lead in half an hour but what unpalatable truths emerged for Gilroy and his selectors? That Bernard Brogan is indispensable and the team looks much reduced in his absence? Hardly a revelation. That the back-up for the forwards in general is thin? That won’t have taken too much time in the video analysis suite.

There were associated fade-outs elsewhere on the field but in fairness to a defence, if the ball keeps coming back at them with nothing productive happening at the other end there’s only so much that can be done to stave off disaster. One issue that received little comment in the aftermath was the crucial one of discipline. The desire to eliminate the sort of free-kick concession that sank the team in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final remains an ongoing struggle.

It doesn’t come easily. Identified by Gilroy as a priority in the early matches of the league, discipline has deteriorated steadily. In the GAA’s fair play index, which rates teams by the number of yellow and red cards they accumulate, Dublin were second after week two, 10th after week five and ended the regulation season in 20th place.

The urgency with which this was addressed for Sunday is interesting. Dublin were virtually level with Cork (20 frees conceded against 19) in the league final, which represents a 35 per cent improvement on last August’s All-Ireland semi-final when the ratio was 31-19. The problem now is the balance between vigorous defending and fouling may have over-adjusted, as Cork’s 0-18 from play might indicate.

On a more specific disciplinary point, Dublin started without two forwards, who in all likelihood would have turned around the one-point deficit: Eoghan O’Gara and Alan Brogan. Both were missing because of suspension. O’Gara’s case is the most frustrating. The jury remains out on his prospects of really establishing himself at elite levels of the intercounty game but in the opening matches there was sufficient evidence to suggest his football and ability to combine ball-winning with bringing others into the game had improved on last year.

He needed more game time, not eight weeks in the stands.

Alan Brogan got suckered into a red card in Galway and his loss was more vital. He mightn’t even have started the final, as Gilroy has shown signs of wanting to keep him on the bench as a game breaker but even so had he been in a position to replace his brother for the final quarter or come in earlier, Dublin’s attack wouldn’t have been as directionless.

Whatever about centrefield and the defence where there are options, Gilroy has no room for manoeuvre in attack. Already he is coping with Mark Davoren’s injury-cursed intercounty career and the career-driven departure to London of club-mate Niall Corkery, whose unspectacular ball-winning proclivities would have been useful on Sunday.

Conal Keaney, who might have been handed the last-minute, acute-angled free on the left, has returned to the hurlers.

Then in the space of 10 minutes, three forwards get injured. Criticism of Gilroy’s substitution policy has to be tempered by what was available. Darren Daly, a fast, mobile defender, wasn’t that bizarre a choice to replace Bryan Cullen in the role of patrolling between the 40s but injuries to Bernard Brogan and Diarmuid Connolly constituted a loss of fire-power and menace that proved fatal. Not alone did Brogan’s absence remove his scoring threat as well as his strikingly improved ability to create chances for others and the consequent distraction wrought on defences, but the forwards who remained appeared to conceive doubts as to their karma as the match wore on.

When Dublin lost to Kerry in the 2007 All-Ireland semi-final there was much focus on Stephen Cluxton’s error, which gifted possession to Kerry when there was just a point in the match. But more significant than that was the manner in which Kerry moved the ball around like fighters jabbing for an opening before Seán O’Sullivan was placed in enough space close to goal to fist a point. Their concluding score came from a similar display of keep ball, which culminated in getting possession to their chief shooter on the day, Declan O’Sullivan, who dispatched the point.

That confidence and competence on the ball – being able to receive a pass, secure possession and make sure you successfully move possession on to a team-mate – was the antithesis of Dublin’s play in the final quarter of Sunday’s match.

Coaching that technical facility and effortlessly-sound decision making isn’t easy. Although Tomás Quinn never looked likely to bend over that last-minute free and, without trying to explain his more flamboyant miss just after Cork had equalised minutes before, no one made the run or showed for him to make possible a potentially successful improvisation.

But when the dust has settled on Sunday it’s as well to remember Dublin looked distinctly superior when full strength. They started with half of the line-up that began last year’s All-Ireland meeting between the teams; Cork were missing just two. If the first-choice forwards stay clear of injury and suspension, narrowly losing a league final to the best team in the country isn’t going to inflict lasting psychological damage.