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James Dolan wrestles with Dublin's Ciaran Kilkenny. James Crombie/INPHO
Blue Sunday

'The boys relish this challenge' - Westmeath's blanket was no bother to the Dubs

Job done for Jim Gavin who celebrates his third straight Leinster title as Dubs boss.

DUBLIN CELEBRATED ANOTHER Leinster title last night after they beat the Westmeath blanket.

Two goals in the space of a second-half minute killed off Tom Cribbin’s side and earned the Dubs their 10th crown in the 11 years.

They scored 2-13 but held Westmeath to just six points and afterwards, manager Jim Gavin said his players ‘relished’ the challenge of unpicking their opponents’ system.

“(Westmeath) haven’t played that defensive or that counter-attacking before,” Gavin said.

“I haven’t seen that before from them but I thought they did it quite well.

“They can play orthodox as well and they’ve shown that they can hurt teams when they do that.

“Even when we got the two quick goals I thought they stayed in the game. They limited us to 2-5 in the second half.

From their own perspective I think they’ll do well in the All-Ireland series.

Westmeath dropped 13 men behind the ball and though they managed to stifle Dublin’s attacks, particularly in the first half, they couldn’t make their own chances count at the other end.

Gavin added: “That is the challenge for any team that plays that defensive counter-attacking style, you need to make profit when you attack. That’s the challenge obviously for us defensively, to make sure that they don’t score on their counter-attacks.

The boys relish this challenge. Coming into the game it was one of the gameplans that we thought they might roll out and they did. I thought we handled it very well.

“They could have played their traditional style of play but they chose not to. That’s their choice and I thought they played it very well.”

Dublin’s performance was far from perfect, Gavin admitted, and there will be plenty to work on before the face an All-Ireland quarter-final in three weeks’ time.

“We maybe forced the shots (in the first half). I think we worked the ball into good shooting positions, and the shots were on when they took them, but the execution wasn’t the best.

He added: “The decision-making let us down once or twice, and handpasses when they weren’t on. The execution of that technical area, it’s one of the areas that we train hard on and I know that the players themselves will be disappointed with that.

“But it’s a provincial final, it’s winner-takes-all, and whether it was one point or more, we’re just happy to win today.”

– First published 07.00

5 talking points as Dublin clinch another Leinster crown and march into the quarter-finals