The art of talking up Leinster's damp squib - quick fire round with Kevin McManamon
ONE of the tangential consequences of Dublin mowing down Leinster's wannabes with such ease and monotonous regularity is that it's getting harder and harder for their manager or players to (a) talk up their subsequent provincial match and (b) talk down their own most recent performance/All-Ireland candidacy.
Here is Kevin McManamon's efforts at talking around, but never directly through, the fact that Dublin were so much better than Kildare in Croke Park two Sundays back, they hardly broke sweat.
Question: Comprehensive result, then, Kevin?
Answer: "I had a look back there on Sunday evening, kind of went through it then what went well for us.
"It was nice to get the win, the goals were a big thing for us. It was great to create chances again and take them."
Q: You didn't take your your foot off the jugular. Is that a characteristic of this team now?
A: "Yeah, I suppose one of the things about a good team is to keep going until the end.
"I suppose it would be stressed at times in the dressing-room but it wouldn't be something that we'd be too obsessed with.
"But definitely, yeah, it's a nice feature to have."
Q: General consensus had it that this was as close to the complete performance as Dublin have come. Would you agree?
A: "Not really, I'd say we're a long, long way from complete performances.
"I suppose a lot of things did go well for us but it could have been a different story if Kildare took more of their chances in the first half, it would have been a tighter game and that last goal before half-time kinda really put the daylight between us."
"I would have felt they could have been a bit closer to us.
"Look, there are a lot of standards we have that we didn't achieve on Sunday but look at the end of the day we did perform in the upper echelons of our capabilities, so we were happy.
IMPROVE
"But there's still a few things that we'd like to improve on."
Q: Is it difficult to push yourself to address those things when you're winning so easily?
A: "No, I wouldn't say it's hard to.
"You're always trying to improve, to find any areas where you can grow.
"So we have to look at it and there's plenty of time on the training field and I'm sure there will be an internal game over the next few days, give us a chance to go after it and give the guys who didn't play the last time a chance to get into the team.
"I think they're the big days for the panel members."
Q: It's been said a lot that these type of games don't help you later on, when it's put up to Dublin by stronger opposition?
A: "I wouldn't say that, it was a tricky game. They were very much up for it.
"I don't buy into it. We just have to go out and play and try to beat what's in front of us. Try and get as much as you can out of it. What else can you do, d'ya know what I mean?"
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