Leinster SHC Preliminary round final replay: Dublin 3-11 Laois 0 -15 So, for fans of the cliché, here was a funny old game.
A sequel, which by its nature was tamer and less surprising than the original. A game won by a team which ran up 13 wides in the first half and got the lucky break when the referee declared an amnesty on the steps rule. To Dublin the paradise of playing Kilkenny in Nowlan Park next week. To Laois the perdition of the qualifiers. Funny enough for you?
Laois will come away complaining that the game's pivotal moment, a Ger Ennis goal 12 minutes from time, came about only when Ennis had taken a sufficient number of steps to leave Fred Astaire gasping. The charge is fair but not Dublin's problem.
Hard-bitten philosophers of the "what goes around comes around" school will point out that the pivotal moment of the drawn game a week earlier was when Laois's Tommy Fitzgerald fouled the ball immediately prior to his goal.
Dublin deserved to win on Saturday evening because they had more of a belly for it and because they executed their game plan a little better. For those patches when they popped low, diagonal balls into their forwards they looked as if they would win at a canter.
Down the other end, Damien Culleton, who scored 1-1 off two such passes last week, must have wondered what he had done to deserve such a diet of aerial bombardment. The Laois full-forward line ended up with one point. There's a lesson in there.
Like last week, only slower, Dublin began well. Positional switches left Darragh Spain marking Culleton from the start, with the excellent Kevin Ryan moving into centre back. With Conal Keaney playing deep and Stephen Hiney contributing a wonderful performance, Dublin eventually found a solid platform on their 65.
Joe Phelan scored an early point for Laois, but Dublin were game and, despite the hurried unimaginativeness of much of their approach play, they had forwards who would scavenge for anything. Conal Keaney scored a prodigious point from a free on his own 65-metre line, before Mossy McGrane followed up on a blocked Kevin Flynn shot to pull to the net.
After that the game began to find some sort of rhythm. Dublin needed more than two wides for every score they got. Laois subsisted on scraps and James Young's free-taking.
By and large both sides insisted on playing the game in a central corridor of airspace. Stephen Perkins at one end of it, Patrick Cuddy and Paul Cuddy at the other end. The snow-capped ball dropped out of the sky into cupped hands again and again.
There were moments of reprieve. Robert Jones scored one of the best points of the championship on 22 minutes when he sharply clipped a ball over from the right sideline. That brought Laois back to level, but didn't encourage them into further explorations regarding the width of the pitch.
Mossy McGrane, understandably, was struggling with his frees. He never got an easy one to get his confidence going and popped all three first-half opportunities wide. By way of compensation he had a fine game anyway, supplementing his early goal with two points from play before the break to send Dublin in with a one-point lead. A fraction of what the margin should have been, but a lead nonetheless.
Dublin took remedial action on their half-forward line in the second half. The starting three had been scoreless and redundant much of the time, and Damien Russell and Tommy Moore vanished as Shane Martin moved to centre forward and Kevin Flynn began to forage a little farther afield. Martin's lively wandering exercised Paul Cuddy a little more than the policy of shoulder-to-shoulder slugging had, and the Dublin player ended up with five points from play in the second half.
The first of Martin's scores was followed quickly by the second of McGrane's goals. Derek O'Reilly, a tight but tentative (when it came to striking) addition to the half-back line, landed a long pass into McGrane's path. With the Goliaths of the Laois defence converging, McGrane slipped it home. A minute later, Keaney hit a smart free to Shane Martin, who cashed it in. Dublin led by five points.
For Laois, James Young spent much of the match bearing much of the burden. His frees were inspirational and his play in general was swashbuckling and stirring. But around him there were only glimpses of the potential Laois have.
Laois had run up three points without reply when David Cuddy scored a lovely point on the hour, snapping his spring-loaded wrists from about 70 yards and clipping one over the bar. Liam Tynan followed up with a score. James Young landed a massive point. Thirteen minutes left and Laois were ahead again.
A minute later, of course, came the Ennis goal. It was a significant blow to Laois morale, but it didn't have to be a mortal blow. Young popped another point within seconds to narrow the gap to a single white flag. Ten minutes left. Who wanted it more?
Dublin's hunger was a living thing by now. Hiney suddenly was everywhere. Shane Martin scored three points in a glorious final six minutes. McGrane popped a free. Ennis snatched a late point. Laois depended on Young for their only riposte.
Kilkenny folk in the audience no doubt found the whole exhibition charmingly primitive and went away nudging each other and smiling indulgently. Dublin will remember that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step.
DUBLIN: B McLoughlin; P Brennan, S Perkins, D Spain; S Hiney, K Ryan, K Elliott; C Keaney (0-2, 1f, 1 65), S McDonnell; D Russell, C Meehan, T Moore; T McGrane (2-3, 1f), S Martin (0-5), K Flynn. Subs: D O'Reilly for Elliott (24 mins), M Carton for Russell (h-t), G Ennis (1-1) for McDonnell, (52 mins), K Horgan for Moore (63 mins).
LAOIS: J Lyons; L Mahon, Patrick Cuddy, P Mahon; C Cuddy, Paul Cuddy, M McEvoy (0-2); D Rooney, J Young (0-8, 5f, 1 65); J Phelan (0-1), D Cuddy (0-1), L Tynan (0-1); R Jones (0-2), D Culleton, T Fitzgerald. Subs: D Conroy for Phelan (50 mins), L Wynne for Fitzgerald (59 mins), B McCormack for Culleton (64 mins).
Referee: D Murphy (Wexford).
Nowlan Park
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