The Dublin manager points to the bright side on a day when the Leinster champions nearly lost their way, writes SEAN MORAN

DUBLIN MANAGER Pat Gilroy was as composed as anyone in his position could be, having watched his well-fancied team exhibit all of the animation of first-round road kill for much of yesterday’s Leinster championship match.

Apparently powerless as Wexford turned first-half advantage into a six-point interval lead, which was extended to seven by the 50th minute, the champions had two men red carded before the end of 70 minutes.

Fortunately for Gilroy, chief marksman Bernard Brogan put some indifferent finishing behind him and ended up with 2-4, the biggest tranche in the eventual winning total.

“We’re delighted to get away with what we did there today,” said the Dublin manager. “It was very poor at the start, I suppose that’s the thing you worry about when you have a two-month lay-off, what way you’re actually going to start the game.

“We didn’t get to grips at all with the game until the second half. From then on I think we were much better, we were at the pace of the game. But I mean in the first half, we were chasing shadows.

“I think Wexford played very well, but we left them loose, we weren’t closing down men. Around the middle third they had the run of the park and we weren’t doing anything about it in the first half.”

Asked was it reminiscent of the notorious disintegration against Kerry in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final, Gilroy demurred a little.

“Not quite, not quite now, but in fairness we gave away . . . and there were some excellent frees executed by Wexford in the first half.

“But we gave away so much space in the middle third, it was similar to the Kerry game.

“We just weren’t winning ball around that middle third of the pitch at all. We had no platform to do anything, but I think we improved that greatly in the second half.”

The salvage expert, Bernard Brogan, concurred.

“We just couldn’t seem to get our hands on the ball. Wexford were coming at us in droves and they seemed to have a spare man coming from the back. As Pat said, we were six points down at half-time and it could have been past us.”

Wexford manager Jason Ryan was hugely disappointed.

Just as Gilroy must have feared for the champions for most of the match, his counterpart must have felt that an historic coup – the county hasn’t beaten Dublin in the championship since 1956 – was on the cards.

“We didn’t think it was a shock,” he said of his team’s purposeful start. “I was not in the least bit surprised that we were winning by that much at half-time. What surprised me was that we didn’t win it in normal time. When it went to extra-time I felt that with the changes . . . the guys they had to come in, that we were going to be really under pressure.

“We lost out. We have a small pool of players and coming into this we lost two from our full-back line which was a massive, massive blow to us.

“We ended up having to pull players from other positions to try and cover. We don’t have the same minor, under-21s or junior teams coming through as Dublin have had over the last few years.”

Despite the team’s strong first half, Ryan complained about the disruptive effect of having to wait about 15 minutes for the throw-in in the wake of the Meath-Laois match also requiring extra-time.

On a day that had threatened such disaster, Gilroy managed to look beyond mere survival for an optimistic sign-off.

“The positive for us is that that was the third time we were six points down in a game this year and came back to win it. Certainly, if we have a start like that again in the championship we will be out of sight.”