HAS Pat Gilroy unearthed the elusive secret of Sky Blue consistency? Preach doom and gloom through the winter months, highlight the short-term difficulties that come with a major squad overhaul ... and then, hey presto, watch your team embark on the type of Division One run that hasn't been seen for years!

Ah, if only life were that simple. After the madcap oscillations of last summer -- and the one before -- the Dublin manager would be foolish to read too deeply into this overdue sequence of spring durability.

Yet it was instructive to hear Gilroy express delight with the result but dissatisfaction with the display in Castlebar. Dublin had failed to replicate the quality of performance shown against Kerry or Derry (second half) and were "blessed" that Mayo had missed so many chances, he surmised.

Some observers may perceive this as yet another Dublin manager trying his damndest (and doubtless failing!) to deflate the hype that inevitably follows every run of victories for the boys in Blue.

But maybe this year is different. Even among the oft-times excitable Dublin faithful, we can ascertain a "watch and see" attitude to this new-look team. They have been burned too many times over the past five years to suddenly become true believers based on the tenuous evidence of February/early March.

Still, the upward trend is encouraging. As a rule, Dublin don't win three league games on the bounce and they rarely win away. Now they have won in Kerry (a first since 1982) and Mayo (a first since '92).

Their radically overhauled defence has also coped far better than anticipated, reflected in concession rates of 1-10, 0-7 and 1-8, and in the less scientific impression of a team that has upped its aggression in the tackle to a marked degree.

imponderables

Various rookies have looked the part -- two examples include Rory O'Carroll against Kieran Donaghy, and Michael Fitzsimons against Aidan O'Shea -- but the big difference has been a collective willingness to suffocate the opposition when it has the ball.

Here are a few imponderables, though: are Dublin conceding less because they have been fitter, because they have packed their own half of the field, or because they've been lucky enough to capitalise on opponents who were well off the pace?

There is some truth in all of the above. Kerry were obviously rusty and missed their marquee stars more than Dublin did theirs. A Derry attack minus the Bradley brothers looked incapable of kicking snow off a rope ... and, of course, the "Mayo God help us!" cliché was recycled after their reversion to scattergun stereotype.

Gilroy made two interesting points on Sunday. Firstly, he suggested the February fitness gap between Dublin and their opponents had closed, denying his team the same level of possession. Secondly, he accepted that Dublin were getting massed bodies behind the ball but insisted it was not a deliberate tactic -- that it may have happened against Mayo because midfield wasn't winning enough ball.

We're not entirely swayed by that argument: when you consider the deep-lying positions taken up by 'forwards' like David Henry and Michael MacAuley, it seems apparent that Dublin's primary aim is to make themselves harder to break down, before then trying to release two inside targets in space.

In recent years, Tyrone have mastered this 'soak-it-up, attack in waves' tactic better than anyone, but they still required the attacking genius of Stephen O'Neill, Seán Cavanagh et al to ice the All-Ireland cake. Just as Dublin needed the injection of quality that Bernard Brogan and Conal Keaney delivered coming off the bench against Mayo.

- Frank Roche