James Skehill

And I can tell you, it was Burke that was keeping the scoreboard ticking over in the first half towards the end of it as well.

That's not going to win a game for Dublin, if Dublin's next step is to try and get to competing with the other really, really top counties.

we'll leave Tom alone poor Tom in fairness like this is a very fair point maybe cast along as well as if Dublin get one of the goals earlier in the game it could have made for a very different game and there was that spell where Clare basically went 12-13 minutes without scoring yeah but do you see the shots Will do you see all the shots basically

I don't think they're worse than last year.

And I think they actually did address some of their defensive concerns within the Leinster championship.

But my issue would be that, again, the last couple of days, they've almost reverted back to this system, which is they don't work the ball between the lines in the way that the other teams do that are a bit stronger than them.

So there's a lot of trying to go long, which happened way too much in the Leinster final.

Or it's a case of someone further out the field, whether that be Donald Burke,

or one of the other players in the middle third having a low percentage shot, which is what they used to do a few years ago, which we criticised them for doing.

And I just don't know, Murph.

Again, it's one of those, like Kino Sullivan had an incredible year last year, didn't quite hit those levels this season.

So it's difficult when you're trying to take someone from all-star form and maybe they're not at that this season.

But to me, I don't know, like it gets to the point where you're trying to put the ball up to Hedjo primarily and to Ronan Hayes when he comes in,

And the better teams will generally take the odds of a ball being launched in long and come back and punish it.

Yeah, it's funny, the Leinster final kind of colours everything, doesn't it?

Like, if they'd been even a lot closer to Galway within the final, you would say, hmm, looks like next year they're actually well set to go.

Like, the rally is, they dug themselves out of a hole a little bit with the Offaly game in the first game, beat the teams then they were expected to beat with Wexford and Kildare to sit top of the table.

Come through the round, Robin unbeaten.

Like, the win in Salt Hill before the win against Kilkenny, and like, you know, you leverage that off a little bit about the performance against Clare, and particularly the way that Galway kind of went to town on them in the final, but...

If you were to look at the other matches, it definitely represents a season of progress.