The first thing Dessie Farrell wants to make clear is that he saw this coming – not necessarily the end result, Dublin winning 1-17 to 0-13 – only that Monaghan would be right there, doggedly still in the game, as they went down the proverbial stretch.
Which indeed they were, level on the hour mark, 0-11 apiece, after Conor McManus struck back from a mark: from there it was all about Dublin, their passage to a first All-Ireland final since 2020 ultimately safe if not entirely convincing.
“It went as we expected, would you believe,” said the Dublin manager. “I couldn’t understand the narrative around this game. Not that I pay a huge amount of attention to it but definitely some of it was getting through and it wasn’t making sense to me.
“We knew the type of game that Monaghan were going to bring today, and we knew it was going to be a really tough encounter and it took all our grit, determination and experience to get over the line.
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“We had spoken about that all week, that this was going to go down to the wire to the bitter end and we need to be ready for that and thankfully we were.”
Dublin had been smelling blood however, approaching that hour mark, Brian Fenton and then Cormac Costello producing back-to-back goal chances. Again, Farrell wasn’t surprised.
“They use their goalkeeper Rory Beggan really well in trying to create overloads and mismatches and you have to be so careful in how you set up against that because they can expose you at the front of your defensive line through those overloads and mismatches but if you press up and push too hard they can pick you apart in behind as well so they brought all of that and we knew that.
“We’re ultimately just very happy to get over it. We didn’t play particularly well, I think it was a nervy performance from us, a semi-final type performance, if you like. But ultimately showed enough composure and had a good last 10 or 15 minutes and it saw us over the line.”
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The sort of composure and experience that only comes with time, and can never be coached: “We backed ourselves if we were in that position that having those types of players on the pitch at that stage would be a huge help. It proved to be the case today. On another day it may not because those senior lads are a little bit older and you never know, every game takes on a life of its own.
“You can’t coach it. You can’t give it to young fellas. They’re brilliant and they’re full of energy. They want to be involved and they want to be part of it. But there are certain things that life experience teaches you. How to close out big games like that is one of them. We’re fortunate to have that type of experience and depth in the squad.”
“A lot of our players have been through it before and know what it’s about. But I think there are over 20 lads in the squad at the minute who have never been in an All-Ireland final, or they’ve been abroad in the last year or two years. An All-Ireland final is a very new experience for them. It’s very exciting for those lads, of course. And I’m sure the senior guys are happy to have a taste of it again.”
For Monaghan manager Viney Corey there were inevitable regrets, not least in leaving at least two goal chances behind in the first half, while recognising too all games are ultimately won down that same proverbial stretch.
“Listen, it’s disappointing,” he said. “We were happy enough with the way it was going but Dublin seemed to turn the screw from that point on, just in the last seven or eight minutes.
“And they punished us badly all day on turnover. They could have hit 1-10 off turnovers. Credit to Dublin, they put the squeeze on us at that point. If you wanted to bring it down to time, it was the last seven or eight minutes when they started to open up the gap.”
Level again on the hour mark unquestionably gave Corey some hope, before Dublin’s experience in closing out tight games began to tell.
“We would have been happy enough with the third quarter. We held firm. We got a few scores of our own. We kept Dublin shut out. Credit to Dublin, over those last seven, eight, nine minutes, whatever was left at that point, they turned the screw and pressed us hard, and it worked out we didn’t have the answers for it.
“But I think there was a confidence in the camp it wouldn’t be a foregone conclusion that people thought. Some of it was a wee bit far-fetched, that they were going to annihilate us altogether.
“Coming down the stretch, we were happy enough, but that top three bracket, the Kerry and Dublins of this world, it’s a tough bracket to get into. It was looking good there for a while, but you have to play the full 75, and we got hit back in the end.”
