DUBLIN DEFENDER JONNY Cooper has rejected suggestions that the All-Ireland champions are particularly vulnerable when high balls are played into their back line.
In their first Championship game since losing Rory O’Carroll’s physical presence at full-back, as well as Jack McCaffrey on the wing, the All-Ireland holders conceded two goals to Laois.
Powerful Donie Kingston caused Dublin trouble in the air and laid off one high ball in for Stephen Attride to burst through for a goal.
Dublin conceded two in total, the first time they’ve leaked more than one in the Leinster championship since Meath put five past them in 2010.
Meath will play Dublin again on Sunday week at Croke Park and will hope to exploit apparent difficulties in the Sky Blues’ defence.
Cooper acknowledged that Dublin have some improving to do but smiled at the suggestion that they’re troubled by high balls in to their defence.
“The full-back line was always suspect since 2013,” said Cooper, referencing the criticism they’ve received. “So it’s nothing new to me to be honest with you.
“Look, it’s the usual, ‘Dublin are small in the full-back line. They’re suspect at high balls’. It’s that sort of stuff. I’m certainly well used to hearing it and probably other lads are at this stage too. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a threat that any opposition can have on a given day.
“That’s certainly there but people tend to, especially with Rory gone, push that point a little bit further, try to get a little bit more change off it and that’s all external, what people think.
“It is what it is, the challenge is there to defend a high ball on any given day but it’s no more difficult that Rory isn’t there or someone else isn’t there, for me anyway.”
Still, Cooper admitted that the construction of the Attride goal for Laois, when their defence was breached by a powerful runner, was worryingly similar to their difficulties against Donegal in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final.
“A carbon copy more or less,” said Cooper. “That was the big learning point from 2014 against Donegal, defensively we were caught on the hop and that was quite sour for us all to be involved in. We looked at it quite closely and put in a structure that wouldn’t allow that to happen again so it is disappointing that it’s come up again. But it was a personal and a collective responsibility that lads deviated from what they were supposed to be doing.”
Asked to account for the goal concessions, Cooper said they’d committed too much to attack.
“It was a breakdown offensively, higher up the pitch, and we were caught with runners coming back towards our goal and we weren’t in a position defensively to meet them head on, so very similar to previous mistakes which is disappointing,” said the Na Fianna man.
The two-time All-Ireland medallist said it’s good that their mistakes have been clearly highlighted early on in the Championship, allowing them time to improve.
“If we didn’t concede two goals would we have been happy with the performance and would we have moved on fairly quickly? Yeah, probably,” he said. “So conceding two, while we didn’t like it, and defensively we definitely didn’t enjoy watching it back, maybe there was a lesson there.
“I’d definitely like to think so. Ourselves, as players, we’re very competitive people in terms of the fellas who played on the day and who were responsible for those particular things and having that put up to us early on and having to cope with that bitter disappointment from those two goals conceded will definitely stand to us in the long-term, touch wood.”
