Time to celebrate before refocusing

Match quotes: Paul Caffrey is surrounded like the man who's finally found the Holy Grail. Success at last. His back is pressed against the wall until it's stuck. How does it feel? What does it mean? All this in the county that's now won 25 more Leinster football titles than anyone else.

It means Dublin won another tight game, says Caffrey. That's a good thing. And he's proud of the players. No reason to get carried away, though. Not even now, in his moment of glory, will the Dublin manager break from character. Maybe we are seeing the real Paul Caffrey after all.

"Once again our team showed a bit of heart in the second half," he says, making sure everyone gets to hear. "We stuck with it. I think it's one of the trademarks of the season, that these lads don't lie down at the end.

"This team just wanted to go out and perform, and if it was good enough it was good enough. There are areas of the game we'll have to work on. But we'll let the lads have a beer or two tonight."

When it does come to reviewing the video, one expects Caffrey will do a lot of pausing early in the second half. Dublin went from five points up to fighting for their lives. What did he think then?

"I'm just looking on, believing the lads will weather the storm and get back into it, and that's what they did. But it was too easy in the first half and it was never going to stay that way."

Caffrey made some switches, and some worked better than others.

"It would take a fair man to keep track of all that," he admits. "I was getting confused myself at times. But football nowadays is not about players going to one position and staying there, and winning their battle. It's far more complex than that. This new stadium we have here is fantastic, and is suited to players being able to play in a number of positions."

From here then into the last eight, where the only prize left is the ultimate one. The Dublin manager has come a long way in six months, and there's still no end of the road in sight.

"All that remains to be seen. I just know they're a great bunch of lads and I'm awful proud of every one of them. How much more they can develop is our job. We'll push the bar up a little bit higher, but we do know we came through a very exciting today. Let's hope they can go a little bit further."

For his players, yesterday's victory ended a three-year cycle that began with their 2002 title. Alan Brogan was the new kid on the block when they won three years ago, and he celebrated yesterday's win like one of the veterans.

"I think the second one is sweeter," says Brogan, "because it all happened so fast the first time. We've worked hard for this one and had a lot of disappointments over the last two years. So thanks be to God it's paid off and we've won another one.

"It doesn't matter if it's your first season or your last season. We'll enjoy tonight, but hopefully it's only a stepping stone to bigger and better things. We'll learn a few things from this. We'll assess what went wrong, such as the first few minutes of the second half when they got five on the trot."

Brogan recalls looking at the sideline and seeing the number five printed in red letters on the clock. Five minutes of agony before the ecstasy. "A few things were going through my mind. We'd lost a few leads before at half-time over the years, so I think we showed great resilience to come back. And we had to dig in. I saw the five on the board, and we were level again. So I knew it was going right down to the wire. We scored our frees and they missed theirs, and that's the way football goes.

"But Mossy Quinn definitely proved his worth. Two unbelievable frees. He showed a lot of nerve and a lot of steel for kicking them over, so we all owe him for digging us out of a little hole."

The question of how far Dublin can go is then thrown back at Bryan Cullen, Dublin's man of the match.

"We've shown we're on the right track, anyway," he says calmly. "But it's all about settling down again, and refocusing. It's going to be a massive quarter-final no matter who we play. But the lads do seem to be enjoying their football a lot better, and it's showing out on the big stage."

For team captain Paddy Christie the afternoon didn't go quite to plan, and watching the victory on the sideline because of a first-half injury was even more nerve-wrenching.

"Ever since I've played in the championship I've finished every game," he says. "And most league games as well. I don't know how the supporters do that for so long. Things are so obvious from the stand, whereas out on the pitch stuff is so frenzied."