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28th June 2016
01:55pm BST

Newsflash lads, containment isn't working.
If the European Championships were run by the GAA, there would be people complaining that Iceland shouldn't be playing in the same competition as England.
A country of 323,000 taking on England, 53 million strong... it makes a mockery of everything, asking a nation of haunting rock bands and herring farmers to take on an opponent with 164 times the population.
Westmeath, in comparison, with 86,000 souls, is only outnumbered 13 to 1 by the capital (population, 1.2m).
Granted, Gavin is an infinitely better manager than Roy Hodgson but team sport is always about working out the opposition, playing to your strengths and negating your opponents', working harder than them and making everything as difficult as possible for the other team.
Can Meath, Westmeath, Laois, Wexford, Longford, Kildare or any of the rest say they have done that in the last three years?
Allowing Stephen Cluxton to kick the ball short with impunity, conceding territory, funnelling 13 or 14 players back inside your own 45-yard line, attacking with no numbers from deep and isolating your forwards - what has this achieved?
1-22, 4-16, 2-15, 2-21, 2-25, 3-20, 4-25, 5-18, 2-13, 2-21, 0-21...
Complete the sequence. If Westmeath do as well as they did last year, which is a big IF against a hugely impressive Dublin side who have been free-wheeling thus far against Laois and Meath, the answer is 2-13.
But, here is the thing, even if you implement all the ambition-free tactics outlined above, Tom Cribbin is not going to be able to stop Dublin scoring. Since Gavin took over the smallest scoring total achieved in the Championship was 12 points in last year's All-Ireland final against Kerry and that was on a filthy day for football with Colm Cooper playing as a defender.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/747177373146152960
Diarmuid Connolly, Ciaran Kilkenny, Paul Flynn and Bernard Brogan are going to score, or Dean Rock is going to kick the frees you concede when you stop these wonderful forwards by foul means.
You have to limit them as best you can but you must also go out with a plan for scoring yourself. Not scoring a half dozen points, like Westmeath did in last year's Leinster final, but a proper total.
Like the 3-14 Donegal scored to inflict upon Dublin their last Championship defeat in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final. Jim McGuinness had a plan that went beyond containing the heavily-fancied defending champions.
Donegal had the personnel, but more importantly Donegal had the gameplan to trouble Gavin's men.
The problem with Dublin's Leinster punching bags is they have no interest in playing attacking football, even when they are playing teams of similar ability.
Kildare, who were beaten by Westmeath in Sunday's other semi-final, were lucky to beat Wexford by one point in the quarter-finals. The Model County are currently languishing in Division 4 of the Allianz League, yet Kildare played for long periods with two sweepers.
Against Wexford.
How many sweepers would Cian O'Neill set up with against Connolly, Kilkenny, Kevn McManamon, Brogan, Rock and Flynn? Can you still call them sweepers if there are 14 of them in front of a goalkeeper?
Pat Spillane described Westmeath's win over Kildare as "a slow bicycle race" on The Sunday Game as both teams played ponderous, no pace, no risk football.
It was only when they went 1-9 to 0-6 down that Cribbin's team began to play - James Dolan, from wing-back, starting and finishing a wonderful goal-scoring move.
When they stopped thinking about containing Kildare, Westmeath happened to play a little football. Attacking football. More than likely that will be all forgotten in three weeks when they return to headquarters to try and "save face", "keep it respectable" and "give a good account of themselves".
"Dublin are unbelievable at the minute so we have to do something to counteract their strengths, and maybe find some weaknesses," said goal-scorer Dolan (above).
There are plenty of managers out there earning healthy expenses working on ways to beat Dublin but Dublin are on television enough for us all to have a few ideas on how to make life difficult for Dublin.
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