'When I hear Kerry talking about Dublin football, I take it with a large pinch of salt'

DIFFERENT DAY, SAME old story.

Dublin, the unstoppable force of Gaelic football, have won their three championship outings so far by a combined 59 points.

The general expectation is that Fermanagh will be the latest lambs to their slaughter in Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final, another entry on the capital’s list of Croke Park processions.

Rated 1/200 shots by the bookies — not for the first time this summer — the Dubs are expected to stroll through to the final four untouched and still untested.

If Pete McGrath’s side manage to keep the margin to single digits, most would consider it a success.

“Dublin have a job to do against Fermanagh this weekend,” Kerry great Darragh Ó Sé wrote in his Irish Times column this week.

“It’s not a difficult job and there’s no real doubt as to whether they’ll be fit for it or not.”

At this point on the road, he continued, Dublin need a sterner test than one of the summer’s surprise packages.

Damned if they win easily; laughed out of town if they don’t.

“I have said it before: when I hear Kerry talking about Dublin football or other counties I take it with a large pinch of salt,” Gavin said when Ó Sé’s argument was put to him at his press conference on Thursday.

“We are down to the top eight teams in the country and every one of those teams have got there on merit, whether by the provincial way or though the qualifier series. That’s the structure of the competition.

Morgan Treacy / INPHO Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO

“The prize on offer for those teams is a shot at the top four and that is as relevant to Fermanagh as it is to us.

“It is a new challenge we face against a side we don’t know, so there is that danger as well. We haven’t come across them before, unlike other teams.

There is that sense of the unknown so we have to prepare accordingly.

If Fermanagh football is an unknown, McGrath himself is less so. Twenty-one years ago, he was the mastermind that brought Down to Croke Park and snatched Sam Maguire out from underneath the Dubs’ noses.

More recently himself and Gavin have locked horns at U21 level, and the Dublin manager has “huge admiration” for his more experienced rival.

“Obviously his legacy is 91 and 94 with the Down senior football team, that breakthrough for Ulster teams, and they have obviously blazed a trail ever since.

“Pete, the way he carries himself like all good leaders, he is humble as he goes about his business. He has always said that it is a players’ game and that he is there to facilitate it and empower people.

James McCartan was on the Down team which beat Dublin in the 1994 All-Ireland final. INPHO INPHO

“That’s the way he has this Fermanagh team playing and with a lot of structure in defence. They are very composed on the ball and they pick their moments to attack and they have been very fruitful in doing that.

“Their Division Three record and promotion speaks for itself and the way that they have dispatched Roscommon and more recently Westmeath was quite impressive.”

The game has changed in the years since a McGrath team left Dublin reeling — a nod to his remarkable longevity in itself — but Gavin stresses that it hasn’t changed that much.

“The physical aspect might have pushed on but I do recall having played against that Down team in 94 and they were very physically strong with great levels of fitness.

“It’s apparent that the current Fermanagh team have that same physical attribute when you look at how strong they finished against Roscommon who are a Division One side and who were hotly fancied in that game.

“They finished strong in that last 10 minutes and then put Westmeath to the sword quite early in the second-half so that attribute is consistent.

Again, football is a skill-based game and any team of Pete’s I have seen play played a skill-based game.

“They do have good defensive structure but they are playing a nice brand of football that is very controlled and he’s good some tasty forwards inside that he has decided to use in (Tomás) Corrigan and that so it is an impressive side.”

Declan McCusker and Che Cullen celebrate Fermanagh's Round 4 win over Westmeath. James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO

Those who know Gavin know that complacency is completely foreign to him but no matter how he might try to spin this David v Goliath tale, there are facts that he cannot ignore.

No amount of respect or praise changes the fact that there are only 20 clubs in Fermanagh, less than a quarter of the capital’s tally.

But a county only needs 25 top-class footballers to make a competitive inter-county squad, and Fermanagh have pointed the way for all minnows this season.

“The last day, Ryan McCluskey and Marty O’Brien are off the field inside 20 minutes and they still have the resources to put away a Westmeath team who certainly put it up to us.

So, absolutely, the Fermanagh model demonstrates that if teams can be ambitious and if they’re prepared well, coached well, managed well and obviously if they have the technical ability, then they can do well.

Eamonn Fitzmaurice chose not to watch Kildare last weekend – but he has no regrets