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Dublin manager Dessie Farrell looks forward to the challenge of taking on old foes Meath in next weekend’s Leinster SFC final.
The Dubs defeated Laois on Sunday afternoon and, after a slow start, won by 22 points at Croke Park.
A good defensive structure from Laois, as well as a brilliant save from goalkeeper Niall Corbet, left the bare minimum between the sides in the first half water break.
But a goal from Sean Bugler in the 25th minute gave the defending champions the arm shot they needed to disappear into the distance.
“We are obviously happy with the result and are looking forward to the Leinster final,” he said afterward.
“All we can do is take each game on its merits, and we have to prepare accordingly. You never know when a banana peel will present itself to you.
“So we have to be diligent to do ourselves well and take each game as it comes.
“We wouldn’t be happy with what we did in the first quarter – flip a lot of balls and we just didn’t get out of the traps the way we would have liked.”
“So it’s definitely something we should look at.”
It is the old enemy Meath in the decider for the fifth time in the last 10 finals. But you have to go back to 2001 for the Royals’ last win in a Leinster final over the Metropolitans.
They have scored 12 goals in their two championship games so far, including five against Kildare in the previous game at Jones’ Road.
And Farrell admits it’s something they’ll have to consider before the game.
“With much affection”, this is how he describes his memories of the Dublin-Meath matches in which he was involved as a player.
“Meath, we couldn’t see any of that. They’ve been doing really well lately. We played them in the league a couple weeks ago at Parnell Park and they’ll probably feel bad about why they didn’t.” Get out of that game with something.
“They are in a good place and have accumulated very good scores. And in this game, scoring goals at the rate they are scoring definitely deserves attention, that’s for sure.
“So we have no illusions about what awaits us next weekend.”
Laois manager Mike Quirke said it was a wake-up call for his players, seeing the level they will need to reach to compete at the highest level.
The O’Moore Men held firm in the Allianz League Division 2 this year, before coming back to beat Longford in the provincial quarterfinals last weekend.
The Kerryman highlights some previous missed opportunities that had to come in for them to stay with the Dubs, but acknowledges that the Boys in Blue are simply on a different level.
“Given the way we played in the first quarter, we were unlucky not to lead the game (at the breakwater),” he said.
“We had a scoring opportunity and other opportunities that we did not take advantage of. We had almost the same number of shots as them in the first half, and we entered eight points less.
“It’s unbelievable, and it’s a testament to the amount of work they’ve done to be so precise in attack. We did really well with our kicks in the first half, we forced a lot of turnovers.
“We are really satisfied with most of the aspects, except the score.
“You can see how far they are from us in terms of their physique, their game and how they move the ball offensively.
“They are after winning five All-Irelands in a row and we are happy to have remained in Division 2. We are trying to build a team that competes at this level, and obviously they are the best option.
“We could have put 15 men behind the ball and tried to keep it at 10 points, but we wanted to try a little bit, but it probably didn’t manifest itself the way we would have liked.”
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