THE confidence Mayo took from the All-Ireland final draw a fortnight ago makes them dangerous warns Jim Gavin.
The Dublin manager senses new belief in the Mayo players and said on Thursday that his side will have to produce their best in Saturday’s replay to stop the westerners’ from finally ending their 65-year search for the Sam Maguire.
“They’re talking about winning now, they’re confident of winning, so that’s a dangerous team,” said Gavin.
“I’m sure they have [grown in confidence]. They’re a very experienced team, they’ve been around this block before, they’ve been in numerous finals before and I’m sure they know what it’s all about.”
Dublin were sluggish and often second best in the 0-15 to 2-9 draw a fortnight ago and Gavin put his side’s struggles down to “poor skill-execution and poor decision-making”. He’ll demand wholesale improvements on Saturday evening.
“We didn’t play to our standards,” he said.
“In terms of pass-execution, shot-selection and shot-execution on the day, it wasn’t up to the standards the players set for themselves. There were a number of contributing factors but, at the end of it all, we just didn’t perform and that’s what we need to address. We’re playing a great Mayo team and if we don’t [perform], we just won’t get the result.”
The drawn meeting was a conundrum that produced more questions than answers. Somehow, Dublin felt they escaped with a draw, even though they led by three points going into injury-time: “There was a sense that we got lucky,” said Gavin.
“In the first-half, we weren’t scoring from play, we didn’t score until late in the half. We got two lucky breaks for goals - yes, we created them, but we didn’t execute them, it was Mayo who executed them for us. So we got lucky on the day. We were on the ropes and we got a bit of luck… but the players will always give it their all and they did the last day. I thought they showed great character to hang in there - and they would have known that we got the breaks, but they hung in there to the end.”
Gavin insists Dublin’s struggle first time out were quickly put to bed. He says his players have a “reset button”, which means “once the game is over, it’s over”: “It’s in the past for them and they need to learn the lessons, which they have done over the last two weeks. They moved on very quickly after the game,” he said.
“We didn’t adapt as well to the conditions as Mayo did. All credit to Mayo, their gameplan was very solid - very good defensive structure and they played well as a team. They've got a great mixture of experience and youth. Donal Vaughan played a great game for them and they’re playing great football, so it’s going to be a mammoth task for us.”
Gavin also predicts another physical encounter, with hits flying in from first whistle to last: “Look at any of the games we’ve played against them over the last couple of seasons - the game in Castlebar was very physical, the previous two games were very physical,” he said.
“Mayo are a very physical team, so I’d expect nothing less from them.”
Dublin have stuck to their routine of two pitch sessions a week since the draw and Gavin has no intention of “reinventing the wheel” for the replay. He’ll expect them to produce their best and, if they do, he expects that to be good enough.
“My job and the job of the management team is to get the players to be their very best. If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job,” he said.
