GAELIC GAMES:IT IS an article of faith with managers that opponents will be difficult and matches hard won. That continues to apply after the contest is over – and regardless of how hard it really was. But Dublin's Pat Gilroy had no need of dissembling yesterday. Donegal and the joys of their newly-discovered ultra defence were always going to be hard to beat and they were.

Qualifying for a first All-Ireland final in 16 years and a first September re-enactment of the fabled Dublin-Kerry rivalry since 1985 was sufficient unto the day despite the offended gasps of neutrals after a demonstration of how to water the garden through a quilt.

“The only thing to do with semi-finals is win them and that is it,” said Gilroy. “It was an extremely difficult game and we had to show a lot of patience to get through it at the end.

“We knew it was not going to be pretty. Donegal really put their bodies on the line. It is easy to say ‘to get men back’ but they really hit you hard and eventually they might have got a little bit tired and that is where the openings came from.”

A two-point win in the lowest-scoring semi-final in 55 years was a relief in the end. Certainly at half-time with Donegal every bit as hard to break down as their pre-publicity suggested, things didn’t look particularly positive for a team that – having run amok against Tyrone just a few weeks earlier – went in at the break yesterday with just two points scored and neither of them from play.

“I think we had to keep probing,” said Gilroy. “We did a lot of the same things in the second half, it was just that eventually we started to find some space. It didn’t come immediately either. Kevin McManamon made a bit of a difference in that he was beating his man, which was giving us a little more space even though he did not get a lot early off him; eventually he got a lot out of it.

“Every point was going to be at a premium today and you just have to be patient. There was no point in trying to change everything up and change all around you. We needed to be patient and we knew that we would get the openings.

“Some of our passing in the first half was not up to the standard of the last day, even though it was tight there were still good runs being made up front and we did not get the passes off and it worked better in the second half.”

The win came at a cost with Diarmuid Connolly facing suspension after receiving a red card and both Rory O’Carroll and Paul Flynn, with a serious looking hamstring injury, having to go off injured.

“Paul was carrying it coming into the game and it seems to have gone,” said his manager. “Hopefully it is not too bad, hopefully it is just cramp. It would not be good now if it was a pull and I think Rory had just got a lot of pain so hopefully it will just settle down.”

Rather unoriginally, he hadn’t seen the red-card incident but felt that it hadn’t disrupted a shifting momentum.

“For the seven or eight minutes before the sending off, we were starting to get into the ascendancy and we had started to probe openings. The incident happened after we had a couple of good attacks so I think we had started to get into it and men were now starting to beat the tackle and that was probably down as much to Donegal boys getting tired and we had some fresh guys as well who were helping to break the tackles.”

For captain Bryan Cullen personally it was a first semi-final success in four attempts.

“It’s obviously a great achievement. It’s something Dublin teams have tried and failed to do for 15 or 16 years. But at the end of the day, there are plenty of teams that have gotten to All-Ireland finals and didn’t finish the business. There is one more game for us there.”

Gilroy appeared uncomfortable with any reference to the upcoming final. After all, the most recent championship encounter with Kerry ended two years ago in a massive defeat after he which he described his players as “startled earwigs”.

Happy the manager with no need for such phrase-making.