It's taken a couple of months to get here, but the Championship has finally bent its four top sides toward each other, and the remaining three games could be jousts for the ages. We did admittedly have to suffer through four exceptionally one-sided quarter-finals, with Kerry's saunter against Galway now taking on a sheen of competitiveness given that the seven-point margin was the smallest of the quarter-finals.
While it is difficult to glean too much information from such one-sided hammerings, Jim McGuinness did flag one Dublin tactic that may haunt them against Tyrone. Writing in The Irish Times, McGuinness accentuates a tactical manoeuvre by Jim Gavin that may not work against Tyrone:
Dublin went zonal on the Monaghan kick-out. This isn't a new tactic but Dublin decided to push four players into the full-forward line and three into the half-forward line.
It forced Monaghan to go long but for me it didn't work. Four is a lot to push into the full-forward line and once or twice Rory Beggan clipped the ball over the four of them into that pocket between the 20 and the 45 and Monaghan got out with the ball. That tactic got them out two or three times and that's a lot of bodies for Dublin to have committed to that area of the field if you're not going to win possession.
It changed because Monaghan decided they were going to go long anyway and that was when Dublin really took control in the middle of the park.
It was interesting stuff from Jim Gavin even if it didn't work. With Tyrone in mind, this could be risky. Obviously if you push seven up, you've only seven at the back and a 'keeper like Niall Morgan who can pick out a long pass over the top and take out seven and maybe eight opposition players.
You can read McGuinness' column on The Irish Times' website.
Alternatively, you can read every McGuinness column here.
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