Great teams are often their own worst critics, and so it’s proving with St Vincent’s.

The reigning All-Ireland football champions didn’t appear to break much sweat in dispatching Portlaoise on Sunday.

The Laois men were considered one of the main contenders to the holders’ provincial crown but they were dismissed courtesy of a convincing 10-point victory margin for the Dublin champions.

The winners did outscore their hosts 2-2 to 0-1 in the always important third quarter. But other than that, St Vincent’s are seeing nothing but room for improvement.

Next up are Westmeath champions Garrycastle, on Sunday week, and although the bookies continue to reduce the odds on St Vincent’s being beaten before St Patrick’s Day, defender Ger Brennan sees it a little differently

Unequivocal best

“We’re just very thankful to have got out of Portlaoise with the win,” says Brennan, back to his unequivocal best these days after missing Dublin’s championship campaign this summer.

“But there are parts of our game we wouldn’t be content with. Particularly in the first half, and all those goal chances we missed. And then stepping off the Portlaoise forwards and midfielders giving them opportunities for goals themselves. So we were lucky.

“And we are still switching off for large parts of the game, most notably the latter part of the first half. We were standing off the Portlaoise players, and in fairness to them, they grew in confidence.

“I guess we were a bit annoyed with ourselves when we came in at half-time (just a point up, 1-4 to 0-6). We knew we had to get the finger out if we were going to win the game.”

Yet there were plenty of warning signs for any team who thinks they can stop St Vincent’s this season.

Diarmuid Connolly demonstrated his usual bag of tricks, and Shane Carthy struck 2-2, proving the Dublin champions are not overly reliant on their more obvious scorers.

“In fairness to Shane, he works really, really hard at his game, as well as everyone else,” says Brennan. “But if anyone thinks they are better than what they are, you are going to get a kick in the backside. We just need to take each game as it comes, look at our good points and try to keep them going – and work on the bad points too and try to improve on them.”

All of which should make for ominous reading to those still left in the football competition, across all four provinces.