Today's game at Croke Park is critical to Tommy Lyons's reign as Dublin manager, explains Tom Humphries

For Dublin, last summer was almost comic-book glorious. The sun gave its benediction to every Sunday and the crowds swarmed back to the Hill.

The beloved Dubs scored goals borrowed from the dreams of young boys and with their big talk and cool swagger they annexed the sports pages. They gave us arseboxing and gave us the thought that cometh the stadium, cometh the great Dubs team to fill it.

They failed it seemed only for want of a free-taker and interested parties were advised to tune in this summer for the next thrilling instalment.

New characters. New story lines.

In fairness, if there was ever a caveat whispered, it came from the lips of the ringmaster himself.

"The first year is always the best," said Tommy Lyons almost to himself in Croke Park after the loss to Armagh. And then later, when the air had cooled, he was inclined to tell people that Dublin had overachieved.

Perhaps he was right. Or maybe he was saying that one demonstration of healing the halt and lame does not a messiah make. Put him on water and he would not necessarily walk. Give him a team without the buoyancy of class and he would sink.

Whatever Lyons meant, he has been proved right in his caution. Ever since then Dublin have looked ordinary and the manager's estimate as to his team's limitations has been proven right.

Worse than that, he has become cruelly aware of the tidal nature of support within the city, a lesson that history or Mickey Whelan could have taught him.

For a manager who can be so original and so positive, the response has been disappointingly flat and familiar. The media have shorn Dublin of their golden promise. The goldfish bowl in which the players live and play has been stifling them. There aren't enough players out there who are hungry.

It may be just a matter of months since Tommy Lyons, once of the Evening Herald, became Tommy Lyons mainstay and posterboy of the Dublin Daily, but the changes in attitude have been immense.

Last Saturday in Clones, Lyons wondered aloud and, not a little resentfully, if as many journalists had turned up the previous week to write Seán Boylan's obituary.

While he spoke on the Clones pitch his team were scurrying out the door and on to the bus avoiding media comment as they went.

This week, Dublin have declined to name a team and the drawbridges are up. And there is a sense that whatever happens in Croke Park this afternoon will be the defining moment of the Tommy Lyons era.

Short by a point last summer in an All-Ireland semi-final, they face the same opposition again. Both sides look strangely shrunken since last year. A Dublin failure will leave the management team two years into a three-year reign with little discernible progress. A win might set the good times rolling again.

The trouble for Dublin isn't media or goldfish bowls or players who want to play. It's simpler than that. On their opening championship day against Louth, the Dubs fielded what they hoped would be their championship 15: Cluxton; Cahill, Christie, Griffin; Henry, Magee, Moran; Whelan, Magee; Cullen, Ryan, Connell; Brogan, Cosgrove, McNally.

No experiments there. A firm declaration of belief. They won well. They have played twice since.

This afternoon if Tommy Lyons produces the following side there would be a little surprise but not a lot. Cluxton; Casey, Christie, Griffin; Goggins, S Ryan, C Moran; Whelan, Mulligan; Brogan, Sherlock, Ó hEineacháin; Quinn, Farrell, O'Callaghan.

In other words, there is no sector of the team that is secure. There has been so much shuffling that players are dizzy. Very few players have been granted the endorsement of a long unconditional run in the side.

The spine is the worst-afflicted area. Worries at centre back and midfield, no recognised centre forward and a number 14 low on confidence.

From being a team which was just three players short of a jackpot, Dublin have become a side where as many as 10 positions are up for grabs. In high summer that is unsettling.

Tommy Lyons need only gaze across to Joe Kernan this afternoon to see the benefits which can be derived with the comfort of certainty. Last summer Armagh fielded the same 15 for their last three games, versus Sligo, Dublin and Kerry.

Before that, in the game against Donegal, Kevin Hughes played instead of Andrew McCann. Against Fermanagh, Hughes played instead of Aidan O'Rourke, the standard 15 played in the replay against Tyrone and, on the first day against Tyrone, Paul McCormack was in instead of Francie Bellew, but that situation was reversed during the game.

In other words, in four games the same 15 started. In the others there was just one change.

Contrast that with Dublin just three games into their summer.

Only eight players have started in each match. Of those eight only Stephen Cluxton and Paddy Christie could be said to have entirely justified their immutable status.

The others, Padraig Griffin, Colin Moran, Ciaran Whelan, Alan Brogan Jonathan Magee and Ray Cosgrove, have ebbed and flowed. The last two players named must be on something of a knife edge regarding what they will be doing this afternoon.

So what is going on? A manager whose trump card has always been his voluble certainty seems suddenly dithery. The jury is still out, however, as regards the team as a whole. Certainly, the court would like to hear more about Tommy Lyons's partners in the enterprise.

The Dublin management team have been a curiosity from the start. In assembling a slate of selectors Lyons chose to put the strongest possible wind beneath his wings.

In Dave Billings, Paddy Canning and Pilar Caffrey he assembled some of the strongest and sharpest football personalities in the county.

Each of the men could have had a reasonable claim on Lyons's job himself. In clubhouses around the county, people wondered how they would all get on and which of the four was just biding his time.

So far, there is no blood on the walls. On the sidelines there seems to be very little communication between the four and older players in particular have expressed surprise at the extent to which Tommy Lyons's voice dominates all others.

Of course, when you have a summer like last year's you know that such expressions of surprise will necessarily be muted. The point is that if the Dublin backroom team are functioning well there can be no question that they know their best team.

The question is whether or not they think they can win an All-Ireland with that team. If that is the case are they hoping that the apple will hit them on the head or that the bath will suddenly overflow.

Most alarming for students of the Sky Blues must be the fact that there is no settled line in the entire team.

Two forwards from last year have suddenly been redeployed as half backs, but Johnny Magee, who operates under a strict speed limit, remains.

You think of All-Ireland-winning half-back lines and realise Dublin aren't there yet.

In the full-back line Paddy Christie reigns supreme and Paul Griffin will survive even if he looked very uncomfortable in Clones last week when forwards ran at him.

David Henry must wonder what precisely the management are looking for in a corner back because the number two jersey seems to be up for grabs regardless of his efforts.

At midfield, Ciaran Whelan often clocks in but isn't seen on the shop floor for most of the day and the issue as to who will be his partner is moot.

Ken Darcy, voted midfielder most likely to succeed a couple of seasons ago, has evaporated. Darren Magee is inconsistent and prone to the odd howler. Darren Homan brings spirit and guts to the party but is injured today.

The forwards are in uproar. Young Alan Brogan looked tired in Clones but presumably class will reassert itself there. Ray Cosgrove's six-goal season is looking increasingly aberrant, however, and as a player in his mid-20s who made no impression at inter-county level before last season, he must be starting to doubt himself. He needs to rattle a net soon.

Bryan Cullen played all but 10 minutes of Dublin's league campaign. A giant expression of faith in a young player. All the more so given that he played at centre forward, a position to which he is palpably not suited.

There is enough footballer in Cullen to survive the difficulties of turning with the ball and the handicap of modest pace, but he is a centre back of real quality.

Against Laois he found himself pulled from the fray when the going got tough. In Clones last week he watched all but the final two minutes from the bench. If his confidence isn't all shot through by now he's a more remarkable young player than even Tommy Lyons takes him to be.

In the business of turning Cullen into a centre forward one suspects the Dublin management's wish was father to the thought.

Of the available options for a number 11, Jason Sherlock is the most viable. He is snappish around loose ball and he distributes well. Also he has experience.

Although there are denials all round, Sherlock and the Dublin management don't appear likely to form a mutual admiration society at any time in the near future.

There was something pointed about the way in which Senan Connell and Dessie Farrell sought to bring Sherlock into play at every opportunity last weekend, but one fears that Sherlock's dedicated, cerebral brand of football is likely to be under-appreciated for a while yet.

Farrell and Connell are conundrums in their own right of course. Dublin invariably look a better team with Farrell in the forwards. He has never been blessed with the pace of a speeding bullet, but he takes possession beautifully and distributes it creatively.

Early in the Lyons era some less than sensitive talk from the manager about the GPA put a little distance between himself and the player, but last Saturday was a glimpse of what Farrell still has to offer despite years of struggle against injury.

Connell is a different kind of player and what he brings to the table is less frequently celebrated. He has his days when he scores frequently and last Saturday brought a rare goal, but generally he is the old-fashioned idea of a wing forward, a hustler who gets the ball into the full-forward line.

Sometimes he achieves this with a 10-yard burst, sometimes with a quick handpass. Dublin have to decide if they want Connell's work ethic or something with a bit more bling. At the moment Connell and his sweat are all that is available.

The failure of Cullen to blossom into a championship centre forward leaves a hole in the team. Briefly last winter, after his impressive county final performance, it was thought that Dublin might move for Kevin Golden of St Vincent's with an eye to that role.

Big, with good hands and capable from frees, Golden was another whose face didn't seem to fit.

Dropped unceremoniously from the under-21 side last autumn, he got a couple of runs in the O'Byrne Cup and disappeared from view.

In that Golden is rather like the long-distance lorry driver who finds himself in an old lady's basement in the Carlsberg advertisement. When he got pushed through the trapdoor he found the familiar faces of Eoin Bennis, Declan O'Mahoney, Enda Crennan and Peter Lawless.

As for the full-forward line, it is a distillation of the greater problems of the team. There is a suspicion that there must be a better formation available but there are various impediments to finding what it is. And things have changed anyway. The ball isn't coming in early enough or else it isn't clever enough. The spaces are tighter.

Alan Brogan looked tired last weekend, but Croke Park suits him. What else was learned? Tom Mulligan, underused in the league, looks uncomfortable in the full-forward line. He's a middle-third-of-the-pitch player.

John McNally and Ray Cosgrove are problematic. Mature players who appeared to have had breakout seasons last summer, the confidence and swagger is gone.

McNally has started two of three championship games and was hauled ashore in both of those. Mossy Quinn seems oddly treated amidst all this.

Top scorer for the county in the league despite never being given the security of tenure, he gets popped in and out of games wantonly and seems to be judged mainly in terms of Dublin's gaping need for a free-taker.

In this he is in something of a catch-22 situation. His potential as a free-taker keeps him viable in terms of a team place but places so much pressure on him that it overshadows his other talents.

His movement is fine and intelligent, his shooting is accurate and his passing is excellent and creative yet everything goes quiet when he faces a dead ball and a young man who can scarcely miss them at club level starts to sweat. The solution would be a long undisturbed run both as a starter and a free-taker but he hasn't been afforded that.

It's not just personnel issues that have been the problem up front. Undoubtedly teams are playing Dublin differently these days.

After generations of Dublin half backs sought to play like Kevin Moran by rampaging forward with the ball in their hands at every opportunity, last year's models came out delivering the ball early into space.

This year there isn't so much time for the quick but thoughtful delivery and there's tighter marking inside. Dublin, who were so gloriously incontinent in the matter of goals last summer, scored just one during the league and last week in Clones was a departure in respect of the amount of goals scored and the manner in which they were worked.

This afternoon the Dubs get back to Croker, their very own terra firma. Ostensibly they have played bigger games but in reality the stakes have never been higher. This is the hinge game of the current administration's reign.

Shit or bust in the vernacular.

The outcome will depend on who has the confidence, the swagger and the certainty. Dublin have those things in abundance.

Finding them in time is the difficulty.

Ever changing blues: Dublin this summer. . .

v Louth v Laois v Derry

1 S Cluxton S Cluxton S Cluxton

2 B Cahill B Cahill D Henry

3 P Christie P Christie P Christie

4 P Griffin P Griffin P Griffin

5 D Henry (0-1) P Casey S Ryan

6 J Magee J Magee J Magee

7 C Moran C Moran (0-1) C Moran

8 C Whelan (0-3) C Whelan C Whelan (0-1)

9 D Magee (0-1) D Magee D Homan (0-1)

10 B Cullen (0-3, 2fs) T Mulligan (0-3) S Connell (1-1)

11 S Ryan S Ryan (0-1) D Farrell (1-1)

12 S Connell (0-1) B Cullen J McNally

13 A Brogan (1-0) A Brogan (0-3) A Brogan

14 R Cosgrove (0-3, 1f) R Cosgrove (0-2) Cosgrove (0-2 1f)

15 J McNally L Ó hÉineacháin T Mulligan

Subs v Louth (five used): T Quinn (0-3) for Brogan (17 mins); T Mulligan (0-1, f) for Ryan (42); L Óg Ó hÉineacháin for Connell (51); D O'Callaghan (0-2) for McNally (52); C Goggins (0-1) for Moran (62).

Subs v Laois (five used): T Quinn (0-3, two frees) for Ó hÉineacháin (half-time); S Connell (0-1) for Cullen (43); C Goggins for Casey (56); D Homan for Ryan (59); D O'Callaghan for Cosgrove (69).

Subs v Derry (five used): D Magee for Mulligan (half-time); J Sherlock (1-3) for McNally (42); C Goggins for Henry (51); T Quinn for Cosgrove (63); B Cullen for Farrell (68).

Three of a kind: Spot the number 15