We have a little game in the press box where we spread bet on how long Paul "Pillar" Caffrey's post-match press conference will last. All the smart money always clusters around the 90-second mark. Shows what we know! Yesterday in the wake of a happy three-in-a-row Pillar forgot himself entirely and yakked on for three minutes and 51 seconds.

Somebody noted afterwards that Pillar's prolixity was most likely meant to compensate us for any press nights we might have been hoping for later in the summer.

We knew we might be needing our long-life batteries in the tape recorders when a tuneless chorus of Campeone! Campeone! olé olé olé! issued from behind the door to the Dublin warm-up area. Then the door opened to offer us a brief glimpse of the Dubs and their bulging retinue of attendants posing for a gang photo. The door was quickly closed but we had reason to expect they wouldn't be grumpy with us.

So Pillar came and spoke for longer than it takes to boil an egg. Not that the Dublin manager was rapping like Ali or leaving any hostages to fortune by bigging himself or his boys up. In the wake of one of the more mature Dublin performances of recent years he was as downbeat as ever.

"We'll sit back and analyse it during the week and talk about how great or ungreat it was," he said as we beamed at him encouragingly. "It was a winning performance and in fairness to Laois I give great credit to them, a team that took a hammering at the semi-final stage last year to come back like that.

"Let nobody say we didn't want to win a three-in-a-row or provincial titles don't mean anything. I'm a big enough fan of Dublin to realise there has been a lot of barren years when good Dublin teams were trying very hard to win Leinster titles and couldn't. I'm very pleased for our players and our management team. Today is a good day to be part of this set-up."

Dublin had one of their better days on the field and Caffrey and his round table had one of their more enlightened afternoons on the sideline also. The Dublin forwards didn't rotate until they were dizzy. The deployment of Bryan Cullen, Collie Moran and Barry Cahill at various times was sharp and enlightened and worked. Laois's encouraging start fizzled out.

"That's the swings and roundabouts of football," said Pillar. "Great credit to Laois. They tried something different today and it came off for a while till we organised ourselves better. The players coped with it very well after that."

A more controlled performance? "Control would cover a lot of aspects of Dublin's play. When they were coming at us we dropped men back. We'll enjoy it for what it is. The players need to unwind from the intensity of our hardest title to win in the last three years.

And the demand for an All-Ireland? "The demand of who?" asked Pillar. "Uhm, the fans." "I'm more worried about players and management."

Moran, Dublin's captain, and a man enjoying a season of welcome release from injury spoke about the period in the game when Laois threw the haberdashery at Dublin.

"Ciarán (Whelan) won a fair few footballs in the middle of the park. Mark (Vaughan) kept us in touch with his free kicks so, you know, while Laois were enjoying a very good period we hung in. Mark's free kicks were a big boost and the two goals came just at the perfect time.

"We're delighted. It is easy for people to say you are favourites or that you should win or that kind of stuff. It's different in reality . . . The lads seem to be as hungry now as when we won the first one in 2005 so it is a significant achievement. Jason Sherlock's memory goes back a lot further than 2005 of course.

"It has been a while since Dublin did three in a row. I came in for the last one of the last three in a row (1995) so it is something to be celebrated. We know there is a long way to go though. When we were ahead today we remembered what happened against Mayo last year. We have to keep working that way."

In Liam Kearns' managerial career in Munster and now in Leinster he has become accustomed to the solemn post-match press conference conducted on behalf of a smaller but gallant challenging county within audible distance of the whooping celebrations of a superpower. Looking for cause of death he started with the obvious - Dublin's goals.

"The third one was very poor from our point of view as, well after that, we were always in trouble. They got men behind the ball and it was very hard to break them down. From there we were chasing the game. We had chances but we needed to get them in the back of the net.

"It was nearly a soccer match at the end they had so many men behind the ball and they were breaking. I'm proud of the players . . . They kept going till the end. Championship football is very cruel. You can't give away goals like those. That's the bottom line. You can't give away goals like that and expect to win. We have to put our hands up.

"They are very disappointed inside. We put a lot into this game. We'll get back to training on Thursday night. It all depends on whether the players have the stomach for it . . . There is plenty of football in those players and with a bit of luck things might have been different today."

While Dublin go back to their domestic championships next week, Laois get ready for a qualifier against the hot team of the moment, Derry.