Dessie Farrell knows his neck is on the chopping block when the Dubs play at the business end of the championship and his team produced the business on Sunday against Mayo.
The first half was a cagey tussle with neither team giving away much but the general feeling around Croke Park was that the sky blues had to bring a bit more to the table to get a win in the second half and that’s exactly what they did as they blew Mayo out of the water in ten minutes.
Dublin hit 1-7 without reply on either side of the break to put them in cruise control any the Mayo team looked beaten with and without the ball much to Dessie’s delight.
“I think we just knew we hadn’t performed that well, we were happy to be a point up at half-time not having gone great and we knew there was much more in us,” Farrell reflected.
“It was just a case of trying to liberate ourselves a little bit and throw off the shackles to play front-foot football. The lads are good at that, and get into their flow when it happens and that first period of the second half was very productive for us and we’re very happy with that.”
Dessie’s master stroke this year has been getting three huge names back into the panel and that bared fruition on Sunday with a really strong bench to draw on when needed.
“Every team is looking for that and that’s where the bit of strength and depth and competition internally becomes very important.
“I mentioned it before, we have 22 new players, who have come into the squad over the last two seasons.
“It’s a significant number out of a panel of 38/39 and they’ve found themselves within that group and settled well and have that sense of belonging, which is really important, and with that they’re really driving the competition as well.
“Then the older, mature lads who have come back into the mix. It was trying to get that bond and cohesion together that was always going to be a little bit of a challenge with that type of number and that mix.
“It’s been good over the last couple of weeks, but at the end of the day today only gets us into the hat and gets us out in two weeks’ time again.”
