LEINSTER SFC QUARTER-FINAL:An unfamiliar looking Dublin side will line out on Sunday but the captain, David Henry, believes they are fully prepared, writes GAVIN CUMMISKEY

DAVID HENRY adopts the same mannerism as his manager Pat Gilroy who he sat beside at yesterday’s 8am media conference in the Regency Hotel in Dublin.

Everything is dealt with a straight bat. Some of the questions give them little choice but to provide polite responses as if any emotion was added they would only sound condescending.

The same questions always get asked about Dublin teams. It becomes mind numbing but they will never cease until the correct answers are given on the field. everyone knows this by now.

This has been the quietest build up to a Dublin championship summer for a very long time.

Gilroy is responsible for that with a radical overhaul of a long-established team. It was a group that had largely been there since 2002. Ciarán Whelan and Jason Sherlock went back further still. Both are gone.

Everyone will recognise Stephen Cluxton in goal. Barry Cahill abides at wing back. Conal Keaney starts his first game of the season. Bernard Brogan is there with elder brother Alan restricted to a cameo, at best, as he strives to find fitness from an injury disrupted winter and spring.

This is Dublin, but not as we know them.

David Henry is not even supposed to be captain. That honour was due to stay with Paul Griffin but he came down awkwardly on his knee in the league against Monaghan.

And yet, Henry is one of the “elder lemons”, as one reporter called him yesterday.

“We’ve been in more situations than others,” he responded. “Maybe a bit of adversity in the past. You would like to think that when situations happen in a game that we’ve been in similar situations before so we try and step up to the mark and change them a little bit. There are a lot of new fellas who are natural leaders as well. You can see that from their manner on and off the pitch. I don’t see why they shouldn’t be similar.”

He may be talking about Rory O’Carroll and Cian O’Sullivan, Dublin’s new defensive spine. Most people coming down the Jones’ Road this Sunday will be asking Rory and Cian who?

That is a good thing. These two can play.

Kevin McManamon is rewarded for a thrilling club campaign with St Judes and maintained that form throughout the league, providing a pacy and powerful foil to Brogan’s excellence.

Niall Corkery is a late arrival only breaking into the team with a decent showing against Tyrone. He joins the energizer bunnies that are Henry and Paul Flynn in a half-forward line that will define the new philosophy this team will attempt to preach to the masses, starting with Wexford on Sunday.

Dublin needed to ensure teams cannot hurt them like Tyrone and Kerry have in recent seasons. Defence starts in the forwards.

“We conceded too much so we had to do something there and we worked on it during the league so you hope that our defence might be a little better come the championship.”

The questions are peppered to the top table. Dublin’s manager and captain are alert though. They have been training at dawn all year.

“All we are trying to do is get the best out of our own performances. In the past I don’t think we have done that consistently enough. We’ve done it in patches and had other bad games on other days. Success for us would be to feel we are getting the best out of ourselves in every game we play.”

A simple and exact statement of intent.

DUBLIN (SFC v Wexford): S Cluxton; M Fitzsimons, Rory O’Carroll, P McMahon; D Bastick, C O’Sullivan, B Cahill; E Fennell, R McConnell; N Corkery, D Henry, P Flynn; C Keaney, B Brogan, K McManamon.