Dublin manager Tommy Lyons is keeping his counsel in relation to incidents during Sunday's NFL defeat by Cork. During the match at Parnell Park, Lyons was the object of some verbal abuse from a section of the Dublin support.

"I'm not going to talk about that," he said. "Anybody involved with Dublin had to be disappointed with how things went but that's for sorting out on the field."

One of Lyons' selectors, Dave Billings, has denied that he threw water at the crowd at the end of the match. The allegation arose on RTÉ Radio's Sportscall on Sunday evening.

"Not at all. Certainly not intentionally. I was taking a drink at the end and the top on the bottle came loose. I was talking to someone I knew well at the time and as far as I knew the crowd didn't get splashed."

The loss to Cork was Dublin's third out of five matches and leaves the Leinster champions with a daunting struggle if they are to avoid relegation from Division One A. Bracketed with Galway in second-last place in the table, Lyons' side has the added burden of carrying a poor scoring difference of minus 17.

It means that Dublin will probably have to win the concluding two matches of the campaign, at home to Galway and away to Roscommon. In an added twist Lyons' predecessor, Tom Carr, is now in charge of Roscommon who secured a good win over Galway at the weekend.

Whereas progressing in the league was hardly a priority for Dublin, alarm bells would ring should the county be relegated for the first time in eight years (coincidentally - or not - the last time the county won the All-Ireland).

"We'll be going flat out to ensure that doesn't happen," according to Lyons, "and that means winning the last two games. At the start of the league we set out our stall to try and find three or four new players and I'm quite happy with progress on that front.

"I hate it when we don't play and I was frustrated after Sunday. The irony is that with 10 minutes to go we were only three points behind despite not playing well. Then it swung on a lineball that went astray and they got a point. We had to go for it and the play got loose."

It was a busy weekend for Billings, whose UCD side lost the Sigerson Cup final in Cork on Saturday. It was the Dublin college's third final defeat in four years, but Billings, the GAA development officer in UCD, is upbeat.

"You have to remember that up until then we had only one win in the previous 15 years. At least now we're consistently at the top table."

The final was somewhat controversial with the NUI Galway goal, in a 1-8 to 0-8 victory, prompting debate as to whether it had crossed the line, and a late 45 thought by some to have been a foot block, which should have been a penalty.

"No. We didn't score enough," according to Billings. "That's why we lost."