LockerRoom: There was a strange period in Croke Park on Saturday when you could see realisation catching up with grim reality. Dublin had reeled back five points in a row and the joint was delirious, jumping with noise. And then Owen Mulligan scored another of his lethal-injection goals, but the state of excitement was such that the hubbub continued for another couple of minutes as Mossy Quinn and Ryan Mellon exchanged points.

And then with 15 minutes left and six points the gap and Dublin without a good goal chance all day, it just went quiet. Goodbye and good luck to the Hill. The jig was up. The summer was over. Thanks for the memories, etc, etc.

For Dubs the lessons were harsh and crushing. Those secret last-minute switches, so closely guarded that Paddy Christie even went in for the toss, were widely known throughout the city beforehand and not exactly designed in any case to strike fear into Tyrone hearts.

Darren Magee didn't seem to have anything like 70 minutes of championship vigour in him. Peadar Andrews struggled with pace. Later on, sticking a forward, Declan Lally, into the wing-back position at a key time in the game proved even more expensive.

Lally fell asleep for what was admittedly a dozy short kick-out anyway, and Seán Cavanagh blew past and supplied Owen Mulligan for the goal which killed the game and silenced the stadium except for the sound of people asking each other how David Henry ever came to join the ranks of the disappeared.

More depressing though as the night stretched on and the mood became more lachrymose was to look at what Dublin are left with in the stockroom. Pillar Caffrey has done a fine job this year in rebuilding a fractured squad and transfusing some grit into their bloodstream. Dublin have given a bit of dash to the summer and a distinct lift to the city and getting a run till the end of August has been fun.

But, but, but . . . At the end of it all if Dublin are to look ahead to a time when they will be anything other than - to use Tommy Lyons's damning description of them - a top-eight team, they will need to learn a whole new ballgame.

Firstly, size matters. Unless you're The Gooch, size matters and even The Gooch shows evidence of eating his Weetabix in large quantities. Kevin Heffernan used to say a good big one will beat a good small one any day. He was right. Having two good small ones in the full-back line was costly on Saturday as Tyrone just blew through Dublin tackles like tornadoes tearing through a trailer park.

Fadó, fadó the citizens of Dub Nation would gather on the Hill and chuckle indulgently at the frank and dark seam of genius which ran through that grand lineage of Dublin corner backs which stretched from Paddy Moran to Mick Holden to Gay O'Driscoll to Lar Foley. None of them kicked like Maurice Fitzgerald or fetched like Mick O'Connell. None of them wanted to. None of them got sand kicked in their face either.

Dublin got physically blown away for long periods on Saturday and watching from the stand you wanted them to abandon a little of their innate decency and be streetwise for an hour or so. True, they submitted the odd late tackle but they were boyishly innocent most of the time.

You watched Mossy Quinn endure a bad day at the sharp end of the freetaking business and knew it wasn't being helped by Ryan McMenamin coming over to critique every kick. You saw a Tyrone side whose physicality has been honed in Northern fields and at times their sheer power turned the game into a contest between heavyweights and middleweights. Dublin needed some edge.

What's there for next year? The end for the great and gallant Paddy Christie came with shocking swiftness. There's not a convincing full-back replacement anywhere on the panel and the game has changed so radically that we can't even be sure that a full back is quite what's needed for filling a number-three jersey anymore.

Elsewhere Dublin have a nice team with plenty of nice footballers. They need some iron in the soul though. They need some mean in the machine. The half-back line wants for the necessary hardness of a Barr, a Heary or a Pat O'Neill.

After 10 seasons of toting our hopes on his back how much mileage has Ciarán Whelan got left at midfield? If he has another summer in him where is the junior apprentice with the adequate football brain to replace him.

Up front? Retain three, maybe four, and beef them up a bit. Put the others back into the pot. Sadly for hurling lovers, Conal Keaney looked the business for much of Saturday afternoon. Mark Vaughan came on (belatedly, we thought) and one sublime pass to Jason Sherlock gave us a clue as to what he might become. On the other hand some early stop-and-chat guff with good old Ryan McMenamin gave us an inkling of what can go wrong too. Vaughan needs to outgrow the need to respond to such nonsense and Dublin need a couple of big, strong wing forwards in the old Hickey-O'Toole mould.

Part of Dublin's challenge is that Tyrone have comprehensively altered the grammar of the game. Here in the city football men still speak and think classically. We know the shape a nippy corner forward should be, and the sort of lump a full back should be. We know the lean shanks of a wing forward and we can tell by a lad's face if he has the cutery to be a centre forward.

And it's all archaic and redundant. Tyrone have reinvented football. The ball gets pumped into space. Tyrone players, supremely and uniformly strong, know that the ball is theirs. Two reasons why. First, they actually know that it's going into space so they break first for the prairies. Second, they know they are incredibly fit and strong and will win any race. So they take possession at speed and from then on are as unstoppable as waves breaking upon rocks. So long as one of the rocks isn't called Francie Bellew they'll do it all day long.

I have a novelty-bet theory about Tyrone. I'd be willing to wager my best horse that if Mickey Harte permitted the opposition, especially Southern-softie opposition, to reshuffle any given Tyrone side so that some forwards played as backs and some defenders played as forwards and the two smallest men played at midfield, etc - I'd be willing to bet the results wouldn't be much different.

Tyrone are strong and muscular right through the park. They play the closest thing Gaelic football has seen to the Dutch concept of total football. Playing their eighth championship game of the season this weekend they just poured forward with the same intensity as they did two or three months ago. Phenomenal.

There was one move in particular which advertised the difference between the sides. Not long after Owen Mulligan's goal had chloroformed the game, Seán Cavanagh had a point which was the tin hat on a mass rampage through the centre of the Dubs' defence. You know when the last bell used to go at school and everybody would tear down the corridor towards the doors and home - that's what Tyrone looked like. Gleeful and confident, a force of nature.

Dublin's golden period contained no moments like that. From the 41st minute to the 47th minute they pumped up the volume in Croker with a string of five unanswered points from play. They were all fine scores (and for that time it seemed Dublin just couldn't lose any kick-outs they contested) but they were filched from far out. Never did Dublin have Tyrone at their mercy.

And of course having gotten back to within three points they then gifted Mulligan a goal through lost concentration. The balloon just went pop.

Tyrone? They are cutting edge. They are as good as it gets. Will they beat Armagh? Let's just say nobody ventures lightly into the valley of death that is the corridor guarded by Kieran McGeeney and Mr Bellew. Before adventurers get to McGeeney there should be a sign that says, Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

Can they do it? We haven't long to find out.