Sometimes - well, on the bad days - Tommy Lyons is apt to wonder why it has to be about him, why the storm that breaks over every Dublin defeat has him as its lightning rod. The answers are plain. Tommy manages in the county that discovered the cult of the manager.

Tommy cuts the deals and greases the wheels and anyway there are days when the only channel available is the world according to Tommy. One leader, one voice.

On Saturday, the Dubs were onto the bus and heading for a swim before any of them had shared a thought. The media weren't invited to dabble their toes poolside. So just Tommy Lyons and a throng of quote-hounds. Hard to believe Tommy doesn't like it that way.

"Was there as many here for Seán Boylan's obituary last week?" he inquires archly before the questions start. A shudder runs through the one spine we media invertebrates share between us. If Tommy Lyons is going to start getting tetchy well then it's the end. Cork hurlers sent just three players to their own press night last week. That makes Cork a gabfest compared to Kilkenny. Now Tommy is acting touchy. What next?

He moves on. Warms up.

"Listen, lads," he says, "it's an easy gig taking a Dublin team out of Dublin to play Derry in their home pitch. Clones is a home pitch for Derry. It was very easy for our lads to be up today. It's very easy for teams coming to Croke Park to be motivated. We play there too much."

The GAA may not share that view. The attendance in Clones was unannounced but it was deeply disappointing. There looked to be about two families from Derry and a rather more respectable gathering of the clans from Dublin, but nothing approaching a full house. Playing the match in a town approachable only by roads the width of a fat man's arteries might have had something to do with it. Television. The dedicated surliness of the Clones officialdom. Who knows?

For Tommy Lyons, having seen his team beaten two weeks previously, this wasn't a day about the quality of the football.

"Today wasn't about how well we played, today was about winning. I thought the lads showed enormous attitude, battled awful hard - men who haven't played an awful lot of football in the last six or seven weeks put a lot in. We have a good bunch and we have a strong management team."

It was hard to know who he was trying to convince. Dublin's reputation inflated like a hot-air balloon all last summer. Laois weren't the first to approach them carrying a pin but they certainly caused the most deflation. Dublin need more than the challenge of a poor Derry side to convince themselves of their own quality.

Lyons insisted the reaction to the defeat by Laois, the whistling sound made by people deserting the ship, hadn't interested them, but clearly it had registered. "We didn't use it once over the last two weeks. This is what we want to do. We talked about fellas looking into the mirror and asking what they wanted. We don't make a living out of this. We just put up with it."

Ironically, the example Tommy reached for was a man who came in from the cold. "Dessie Farrell is a great footballer. Put his whole Dublin career on the line today. He was prepared to go in not fully fit."

And his compadre Jayo? There's no official acknowledgement but it is felt around the team that Jason is not a favourite. 1-3 from play in half a game might change that.

"Jason has had a hamstring. He wasn't fit the last day. Very close to the team eight weeks ago. We have a good panel of players. The extra week was a help but we won because we were up to it.

"Shane Ryan played well. Lots of them played well. You go with your gut on what will work. We believe we have a very good bunch of players. Fellas have short memories. We threw seven or eight rookies in against Meath last year and won. I don't know if we emptied the tank for today. We'll know next Saturday. We talked all week abut being in the draw on Sunday night. We're confident enough that whoever we play we'll give it a good spin."

In the carpark the sun is bleaching the world and Shane Ryan, most people's man of the match, is waylaid on his way to the bus.

"Morale will be up after that win. It was a bit of a change for me. I haven't played defence in a while. Anywhere around the middle of the third the positions are the same the way we play, though."

So what else was new? Dessie renewed for a start. Young guns don't do it for you all the time.

"The experience Dessie brings in is fantastic. So cute. Very calming. He has a bigger influence on the game than people understand."

And Mickey Moran? Almost full circle from the heyday of his involvement in 1993 to the infancy of a team he will have to nurse and nurse. He looked tired on Saturday. His team had become one of the summer's short stories.

"We were chasing it after those two goals. We are only going five and a half months. We didn't lay down. The long ball in caused problems alright. I thought we took three or four fantastic points. That's the way it goes. That was tough for them coming up to Clones. Good luck to them."