The Dublin football team have grown accustomed to early Sunday morning alarm calls over this league. In keeping with a pattern, they didn’t go overnight for their visit to play Monaghan in Clones on Easter Sunday but travelled early by bus stopping for a pre-match meal on the way.
“It was the same against Mayo,” recalls Denis Bastick, who has been a conspicuous performer for the city team in the league. Last year, his spring was constantly interrupted by injuries, giving him limited opportunity to put himself in the mind’s eye when the championship came around.
“Jesus, it was a domino effect,” he says of last year’s injury run. “It started off with a shoulder operation in December. Came back – my first game back I got to play a club game and did medial ligaments in the knee. That put me out for a further eight weeks. And then I came back from that and got a hamstring injury straight away after that. So I was fit towards the end of championship but hadn’t a lot of game time under my belt, so it didn’t put me in a good position to play any championship football for Dublin.”
In the aftermath of last August’s shock semi-final defeat by Donegal it was thought that Bastick might decide to leave it there: he owes Dublin football nothing at one stage. Had they won the All-Ireland, as was widely anticipated, then he might have said farewell.
“In theory you’d like to go out on a high, and that wasn’t the case – it was very disappointing, the semi-final last year, and the way the year panned out for me altogether. But I looked at myself and what I could bring to the team, and I sat down with Jim and [to see] if he wanted me there was another thing as well. So it was a case of if I can get back to top condition and feel that I can contribute to the team in any shape or form, then that was what I wanted to do.”
Defensive block
It was a brave gamble given how much he struggled last year. But Bastick has brought energy and authoritative experience to the Dublin midfield engine as well as getting around the field: his defensive block on a Mayo goal chance in Castlebar was one of the highlights of the league and caught the essence of the edge and hunger with which Dublin have approached this season.
Funnily, he was rested for the Derry game, the night of a thousand boos in Croke Park and a match which provoked a deluge of opinion about the state of the game. From Bastick’s perspective, the chorus of jeers that grew louder as Derry fell into their total defensive formation was not a sound he hopes to hear again.
“It’s slightly uncomfortable. Being a player myself, and obviously the Derry players have to listen to that and the guys on the bench. They’re there to play football and do the best they can, and to hear that from a crowd . . . it’s not a nice element of the game. Those guys are training just as hard as us and trying to play as best they can, so hopefully that won’t be something that we’re going to see later on in the year either.”
Beating blanket defences will become a critical part of Dublin’s summer. On that night they struggled, even if they won the game. Bastick says that the Dublin backroom had them drilled in what to expect. But it required patience and concentration.
Chess
“It was similar to the Tyrone game. We knew going into the game what way they were going to set up; but looking in, it was looking a bit like a game of chess. It’s something that you have to break down.”
“Looking back, our execution . . . we had a lot of wides; we were getting into good positions but didn’t finish the ball very well. So while the score line was very low, we did create chances against that type of defensive structure.”
In Clones, Dublin were in exhibition mode, amassing the kind of score line and aesthetically pleasing football which people have come to expect – and almost demand – from them. Monaghan aren’t exactly carefree in defence but Dublin cut through them. It was a day when their shooting from distance was immaculate but Bastick knows you can live and die with the long range shot.
Accuracy level
“The thing about the points from distance is that the accuracy level goes down. Obviously we had some good points from distance yesterday, but the percentage probably reduces a good bit rather than getting in closer to the scoring area. ”
They only have to wait until Sunday for more target practice. Dublin will be favourites against Monaghan after last week’s trimming.
“It’s a bit unusual actually. It’s not often that it works out this way. But we take every game as it comes. There’s no two games are going to be the same, and we have to get ourselves up for this match and prepare well.
“I think for us as a team, we’re trying to set out for a performance and hopefully the result follows that performance. I think if we get caught up about the team or the day or the event and stuff like that, you can get sidetracked a bit. So really we’re going to focus in on ourselves again and try to recreate a good performance.”
